Into Mozambique

We had breakfast with Mike and Paddy in the beautiful lodge they manage. The views over "the Berg" are breathtaking and Mike started a nice business printing the pictures he takes on canvas and selling these to tourists.

After breakfast we rode to Ladysmith. At the filler station loud music was playing. "Ladysmith Black Mambazo". They come from here, the pump attendant proudly said. I told him I saw them some 20 years ago in the Carre theater in Amsterdam.

From there we followed the N11 north, via Volksrust to Amersfoort. At the entrance of the village the was proud sign saying Amersfoort 100 years. Well in 1990 that was. I don't think anything happened since.
From Amersfoort to Ermelo. This was quite an adventure as a sign said "road closed". Our GPS couldn't quickly work out an alternative, so we guessed our Scramblers wouldn't have problems getting through. I turned out they were rebuilding the road, so it wasn't too difficult at all. Some stretches there was only half a lane and they would only allow traffic in one direction, but that wasn't a problem for us.
In Ermelo Hans wanted to eat at Wimpy's. Some people stopped to look at our bikes. They must be very old they said, 40 years or so, but nicely fixed up! They couldn't believe it when we said we picked them up less than a week ago.

The road from Ermelo via Badplaats and Barberton to Nelspruit was unbelievable again. Smooth tarmac and fantastic views, a bikers dream.

In Nelspruit we stayed at the City Lodge. We had drink by the side of the pool and chatted with a guy from Swaziland. It turned out he studied in Arusha in 1990 and had lot's of stories to tell when we enjoyed some ice cold Grolsch beer. The best laugh he had was when he saw the sign Msasani (where I live in Dar), which means vagina in Swati (his language).

Next morning we went briefly to the hughe shopping mall (mainly to buy clean underwear) and continued our journey into Mozambique.

Crossing the border was surprisingly easy. We we stopped we were immediately attacked by touts ("free lance immigration consultants") offering their service to get us through. We aggreed on $10 each. They helped us fill all the forms, jumped all the queues for us and got us through in less than 20 minutes. That was $20 well spent!

From the border it waqs just over an hour on the toll road into Maputo. We looked afround a bit, had a soda at the waterfront and had a talk with a Dutch farmer that moved here 10 years ago and straight away invited us to his farm 150km up north. We decided to give that a miss and pushed on to Xai-Xai. Maputo is just another big city and wasn't too appealing to us.

On the road up north we saw hundreds of south african cars. Mostly 4x4 and pulling off-road trailors, hughe fishing boats, quad bikes etc. They like their toys!

We found a place to stay at Praia do Xai-Xai after driving on very soft (beach) sand for 4km. Left and right we were overtaken by quad bikes (so this is where the south africans all went).
The next morning we left early again. The first 85 km were pretty bad patch tarmac, but from there the road was OK again. They must have had lots of rain, because everywere there were ridges of sand on the road which you have to handle carefully. Some 20km before Massinga a part of the road had washed away and they were afraid the rest would collapse too. So all traffic was stopped. Truck drivers were alread preparing to spending the night on the road. Some cars found a diversion through the bush (a 5km detour) which we also took. Hard work through mud and and soft sand.
In Massinga we thought of calling it day, so we turned off to Morrungulo, not realizing that we had to fight through another 13km of red clay. The ultimate test for the Scramblers and us.

Morrungulo turned out to be another South African outdoor-camping-holiday spot. The sea water temperature was nice (refreshing) after this long day of riding.

We got up at six again. The 13km of mud had mostly dried up now so it wasn't too bad to get back to the main road. This main road on the other hand had turned into something like Swiss cheese. For 50 kilometers you really had to concentrate on the road (no time to watch the scenery). The small potholes became big ones. The big potholes became craters and the all of the sudden there was this brand new road. The last 100km to Vilanculos was done in no time an this is we are now. Time to relax a bit, update the blog and get our laundry done.