overlanding – Page 6 – Clancy Abroad

Inhassoro a rest and washing day

Since it was the first day I had been stationary for about ten days there were a few things I needed to do. I did some washing. I continued my search for an old phone I have packed away so well I cannot find it. I threw out even more spare water containers. I walked down to the beach below where I am camped. I cleaned my bike, which had got covered in sand stored on the rear of Clancy.

After cleaning my bike I rode the 4km into the centre of Inhassoro. I went to a supermarket called Ana which supposedly had the best range, except it was almost bare. I wanted some protein so I bought two cans of “Corned Meat”. Its guesswork what’s in it.

I then rode around some more and found a better supermarket and Bakery that I will visit on Sunday to get some more supplies when I leave. Then I rode to the central market area and wandered amongst the stalls. I found potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, bananas (over ripe) ,onions, peanuts and more.

Group transport in Mozambique – hang on tight!

The start of the 4km road to the place I am staying

Lilli’s Quarry to east Machaila to West of Mabote to Inhassoro

The transit of the N222 is over. 380km of ‘road’, mostly at 30kph. Some of it only single lane sand track. It took 3 days from Mapai to Inhassoro.

From Lilli’s Quarry Slow to get moving this morning. I wanted to repack and check things from the chaos of tyre fixing yesterday. I also managed to get the new tyre set on the rim properly. Although it was cool at 6:30am it soon warmed up. I got going at 10:30am and plodded along the N222, at between 25kph and 40kph. I passed several Charcoal trucks going towards Mapai. Lots of Charcoal stacked by the side of the road. It looks like Charcoal burning must be big in this area. It reminds me of Angola where there was also lots of charcoal burning. The scrub either supports Cattle, or Charcoal burning. I passed a few schools, but lots of young kids (who should be at school) herding cattle.

One of the many slow moving Charcoal trucks

Eventually after lunch I got internet again at Machaila. I stopped and went through the pain of applying for my Malawi e-visa, which I will find out in a few days if I am successful. The hardest part is paying. Every payment requires and SMS from my Australian bank, and sometimes they take many, many minutes to arrive.

I got going after doing my e-visa, and headed though Machaila. It was larger, but not as large as Mapai. However I saw a woman carrying here baby, but clutched in her hand, was a smart phone. The internet reaches even here.

Collapsed bridge on the N222. And no there was not a replacement bridge.

The N222 got dramatically narrower. It became only single lane. My GPS wanted me to go down an even smaller road, but I thought I would stick to the N222. About 25km out of Machaila, I found a spot by the side of the road at 5pm and stopped for the day. The campers temperature inside was 29C.

Roadside camp east Machaila, its was 29C at dusk

Next morning I got going before 8am. The sandy single lane N222 continued. About an hour in a little car was coming the other way. I stopped to let them pass, but they got out and chatted. One was a South African who was trying to teach agricultural techniques to Mozambique, the other was his Mozambique assistant. We spent a long time talking about the problems in Mozambique, and how you couldn’t develop a project unless you had extra money to bribe the government officials with.

After my chat stop, its was onwards, with eventually the N222 getting better as I closer to Mabote. There was internet in Mabote, but it was Vodacom, and I had a Movitel sim. Onwards through town and about 40km out I stopped to pump some water into the hot water container on the roof, so I could have my first shower in 3 days. 50 minutes later it was about get get dark fast, and I am desperately looking for a campsite. The scrub was too thick, and at the last minute I found an overgrown track into the scrub. I squezzed down it, and I has pretty hard to see from the road.

Camped on an overgrown track West of Mabote

The morning was pretty damp, lots of condensation. I am closer to the coast so maybe the nights are colder. I was only 50km from the N1. I got to the N1 at Mapinhane. I then started looking for a seller to sell me a Vodacom sim. Lots of stuffing around, but an hour later I had a working Vodacom sim and some internet. I headed up the road aiming to get to a campsite about 82km away at Inhassoro.

A police stop on the N1, but they didn’t stop me

About 4pm I arrived at the campsite “Star of Mozambique”. Looks nice so far. I am going to stay for at least 3 nights. Weather is great Max 27C Min 13C.

West of Mapai to Lilli’s Quarry

I was up just after 6am since it was such a terrible campsite. I topped up the clutch fluid (why haven’t I replaced the clutch slave?). I headed out the way I had come in. I stopped at a school and asked the teacher which way was Mapai, and he sent me on another 15km down a 4wd drive track that ended at Mapai. I stopped about 10km in and had breakfast in the sun.

Roadside stop for Breakfast west of Mapai

At Mapai I looked for someone to sell me a sim. Firstly I found an ATM, where I withdrew what I thought was $A125 but actually turned out to be about $A10. I was very confused with the exchange rates. Anyway $A10 was plenty to get me a sim, and a very helpful seller (Arlindo on Whatsapp +258 87 343 4345) got me set up with a sim, programmed my phone, and even answered questions later on Whatsapp.

Parked next to the bank in downtown Mapai

I drove down the road to park out of town and use the internet, and make sure it was working properly. The it was of to the service station to top up my fuel. Five attempts to pay with 4 different credit cards, and debit cards I finally paid them. Diesel is about $A2.10 a litre. I then went back into Mapai and tried to get a proper amount of money out, and with about 3 attempts I was finally successful.

Then I headed out of town. About 8km out I realised I had forgotten to stop and apply online for my Malawi e-visa. So I turned back a couple of kms, took a side track, reversed in meaning to stop for lunch first, and bang – I blew out my rear left tyre. Split in the sidewall, totally destroyed, even the inner tube. This is the hardest tyre to remove because of the bar that acts as a step, which has to be removed. It is also very hard to jack up when the tyre is totally flat. It takes a while. I decided to replace the tyre with a new tyre I was carrying on the roof. This was a mistake. I had to split the rim, and I was a bit out of practice. I struggled to get the new tyre on. During this whole process I was slowly gathering an audience of kids. At the end I had nearly 30 kids watching me, I mean I was the best entertainment in town. Of these 30 kids several were coughing. To go back a bit in time, the sim seller in town had a mask around his neck. I asked him why he had a mask, which he said ws sort of required (the Police were wearing masks). I asked him if everyone was vaccinated, and he laughed – nobody was vaccinated. So back to the tyre fixing I am surrounded by kids, absolutely none who had been vaccinated against Covid. So I decided the daylight was fading, and the Covid risk was rising, so I got the rear spare off, put the partly assembled new tyre on, got one of the kids to do up the bolts, and high tailed it out of there.

It was 28km in fading light to a sand quarry that Lilli (lilli-to-go.com) had put on iOverlander 3 years ago when she travelled this way. So I headed up the rough road, and got there just before it got dark. Nice campsite.

Escape from South Africa, or Nthakeni to roadside north of Mapai

It was a bit of a cool morning. I think I have become to used to having power and turning on the heater in the morning. I thus shamefully started the diesel heater for a while. I got moving a bit after 9am, visited the office for payment and a chat. Then it was off to Pafuri entrance to Kruger National Park. So after paying $A47 for the privilege of driving through 35km of the park to get to the Pafuri border gate, I arrived at the border.

I was very, very nervous. My TIP (temporary import permit) had expired 18 months ago. so I had specially chosen Pafuri because I didn’t think they had customs, who would question me on my expired TIP.

I was right. No problems getting my passport processed, and the Police gave a cursory inspection of Clancy, and I was on my way to Mozambique! At the Moz side I paid 1000 rand for a visa ( Facebook said 550R or 850R but who was I to argue). Then 200R for a TIP, and 100R for some other piece of paper from the Police. Then it was the cursory inspection of Clancy plus the request for soft drinks, to which I provided 3 cans of coke that I had prepared earlier for this very request.

Stopped for lunch along the Limpopo, it was too deep to ford.

Onwards towards Mapai. It is a rough slow road, barely a 4wd track in places. 25kmh most of the time. I was looking for places to stop for the night when I suddenly arrived on the hand operated ferry across the Limpopo. Another chance to be very, very nervous. I asked the guy in charge about shifting the diesel drums of the roof, to lower the centre of gravity, but he thought it unnecessary. So 700R (Facebook said 500R) I gingerly drove Clancy on the boat that did not seem big enough to support the 3+ tonnes of Clancy. However all went well and they poled it across the Limpopo and I reversed off the other side.

Crouched at the front of the boat, trying to not get in the way of the guy poling the boat across the Limpopo

It was getting dark and I was driving down tracks in the growing gloom. I got completely lost and ended up parked by the side of a track between a couple of villages. I would have to figure it out tomorrow in the light.

Almost dark, parked on an uncomfortable slope between a couple of villages – lost

My unsatisfactory camping spot early next morning

This is what it looked like on someone else’s crossing who had a drone.

The Tale We Didn’t Tell at the Time

It happened a few days after we left Jo’burg, when we were heading for Botswana. We didn’t tell anyone at the time because we didn’t want our parents to freak out, but we did tell them as soon as we got home. And have been dining out on the tale ever since! Ha!

We weren’t laughing about it at the time, but nothing was taken and Greg was okay, so we’re regarding it as a lesson we needed to learn.

I did write a short post the day it happened, and have just added it to the blog

So … we were in Kuruman which is south west of Jo’burg. Not far from Kimberley where there are diamond mines. We wanted to get a spare tyre and were told about a place, but were warned to be careful. It was a pretty dodgy part of town with lots of people and cars. Another guy who was working in the car park also warned us to be careful.

I stayed in the car, Greg went and got the tyre and while I was momentarily distracted as he was walking back to the car with the tyre, some little bastard tried to reach in through the open car window on the driver’s side and grab whatever he could. He didn’t get anything and I then made sure both windows were up and both doors were locked while Greg went to another shop to see if he could get some inner tubes.

While he was gone, someone came up and begged for money, and someone else told me there was something wrong with the back of Clancy but I just ignored both of them and waited for Greg to get back so we could get going. When he got back to the car, there were a few guys near him and I thought I’d just wait until they went past and then unlock his door. But they were after his little backpack and tried to grab it. It had his passport, credit cards and wallet in it and there was no way he was letting his passport go!
If it had just been cash he might have. So he held on, got pushed to the ground and ended up rolling under the car and started yelling out ‘Help! Help!’. Good move – that got rid of the guys and got people to come and see what was going on. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the car too scared to unlock the door because I thought if I did that, the guys would grab whatever they could out of the car.

So Greg rolled right under the car and came out on my side. Few scratches but that was all the damage, apart from a broken strap on his backpack. About 20 people came to see what was happening. In hindsight, I should have just leant on the car horn and made loads of noise. That would have either scared the guys off, or got people to us faster, so see what all the noise was about.

Lesson learnt – now when we’re in a town or village, we don’t carry a bag, we keep our passports hidden inside the camper, and keep our drivers licences hidden near the drivers seat because cops want to see them when they pull us over. We only carry enough cash for whatever we’re planning to buy, or take one credit card if we’re buying groceries or other large purchases.

We were really lucky.

Heading home

We’re on our way home. Currently sitting in our favourite airport, Changi

We’ve discarded stuff, cleaned up, packed up and left Clancy locked up in storage until we go back to Joburg in 5 or 6 months. We’ll be sure to bring keys with us next time.

Compared with the 90-ish kgs of stuff we took over with us, we are bringing a mere 10kgs home, plus our laptops. No checked bags, just one very light 5kg travel pack each.

We were very lucky that on this trip, our problems were minimal. 5 punctures compared with 12 on our last trip, and we had none for the last 4 weeks. Last time, we got our final puncture 2 kms from our final destination! A minor radiator problem that a bottle of Bars Leaks fixed. Inevitable wear and tear on our dear Clancy, but that’s always going to be a feature of overland travel.

Here are a few random stats –

Nights we have spent in Clancy since Greg finished building him – 100, over our 2 African trips and the 2 trial runs we did at home.

Kms driven since we left Cape Town in mid-February – 13,800

Number of punctures in 14 weeks of travelling in Southern Africa – 17

Kgs of bread flour used to make our (almost) daily bread on this trip – 10

Number of butane gas cartridges used on this trip – 8. We were able to use our electric hotplate a lot more than we thought we would.

Thanks for travelling with us, it’s been a really great trip. See you next time!

Manyeleti Game Reserve

Leon at African Bush Backpackers told us about Manyeleti and recommended it as a good place to spent a couple of days. It’s just west of Kruger’s Orpen Gate, but can also be accessed from the south via the R40 and some side roads. Our host at Hippo Waterfront Lodge recommended that we avoid the R538 between White River and Hazyview as it’s busy, may have a lot of livestock wandering across the road and can take long time to drive a short distance . We’ve learnt to listen to advice from locals!

After we left Marloth Park, we spent a night at Panorama Rest Camp, a lovely campground near Graskop. It had a horizon pool overlooking the kloof gorge, good facilities including coin-operated washing machines and dryers (which we made very good use of) AND beautiful azalea hedges that were in flower when we visited. Some were 3+ metres high! We were planning on driving north to Blyde River Canyon, then to Manyeleti, but when we got up the next morning it was so foggy we could barely see a car length in front of us. So going sightseeing seemed a bit pointless, and we’ll add Blyde River to our ‘to do’ list.

We crawled down the R533 and heaved a quiet sigh of relief when we were low enough to be able to see a decent distance in front. Headed north on the R40 to Acornhoek where we stopped at a shopping mall and stretched our legs and met a very dapper Car Guard … bow tie, shiny shoes and a lovely man. When we got back to Clancy, he was standing close by, talking to a young Austrian woman. She took a photo of us with the guard, his son and his son’s friend.

Then along the R531 to Orpin Gate. The entrance to Manyeleti is on the right, just before the gate. We paid the day fee of R55 per person, got a map of the reserve and drove south to Main Camp. Manyeleti Gate is about 4kms south of Main Camp.

There are several private lodges/tented camps/other accommodation in the Reserve in addition to Main Camp, which offers cabins, rondevals, campsites and Senate, a tented camp area. We parked Clancy on one of the campsites, which is a large area with a cold water sink, braai and paved area. Ablutions nearby were okay and people staying at Senate share those. We paid R250 per campsite per night – they charge per campsite, not per person. We only paid the day fee for our first day there.

The day we arrived, we went on an afternoon game drive, being very mindful that the camp’s gate closes at 6pm. Saw a huge herd of cape buffalo and wildebeest, antelopes, a couple of elephants. Next day we went out earlier in the afternoon and found a big group of elephants in some scrub. Largest group we’ve seen! There were 4 or 5 babies including one very tiny one, and I guess the rest of the females are pregnant. They weren’t too bothered by us, or rather, by Clancy, and we sat and watched them for ages.

Poor Clancy has had a bit of radiator trouble, a small leak, nothing too serious, but we’ll be bringing a replacement radiator to add to the spare parts collection. Greg bought a bottle of Bars Leaks when we were in Malalane, just out of Marloth Park, so he added the contents to the radiator …. problem solved. Magic stuff.

We spent our second-last night at Elangeni Holiday Resort, just off the N4 west of Nelspruit, then drove the 250ish kms back to Joburg to the place where we store Clancy and camp when we’re here.

The hole in a radiator fixed with Bars-leak

the horizon pool at Panorama Rest Camp, with full moon rising over it

The Car Guard, us, and his son and a friend at Acornhoek

A large herd of Cape Buffalo at Manyeleti

Meeting new friends

Or: A Series of Very Fortunate Events

I’m sure that we will both remember our day with Lilli and Christa as one of the highlights of this trip.

Christa lives in Marloth Park and Lilli has been staying with her for the last week or so, having a break from camping, enjoying some home comforts and making a lifelong friend. We visited them at Christa’s on Thursday morning and spent several hours swapping stories and getting to know more about each other.

Christa’s place is a beautiful bush haven and she has so much wildife on her doorstep, it’s incredible. At this time of the year, before the rains start, getting enough to eat is very hard for herbivores, so she feeds them pellets which are approved by wildlife experts. They smell like grass, and probably have added extra goodies in them too. Many of the animals come right up to Christa’s back verandah and she hand-feeds some of them. The smaller antelopes are shy and hang back, but some of the larger varieties can become very friendly when there’s food involved!

Christa invited us back later in the afternoon to have ‘sundowners’ overlooking Crocodile River and Kruger, then back to her place for a braai. Fantastic, we’d love to! The previous day, they had seen some lions across the river, so we were hopeful that we might see some too. Christa belongs to a local Whatsapp wildlife spotting group that shares information about what is where. No messages that afternoon and we didn’t get to see any lions, but it was lovely to sit with our drinks and snacks and watch the sun go down. On our way back to Christa’s, we saw giraffes, and then so many different animals visited the back verandah, I’m sure I won’t remember them all. At one stage there were 4 different types of antelope there all at once. I even hand-fed a young Nyala buck! He’s the only one in Marloth Park and likes to hang out with the Impala girls. We saw tiny bushbabies, zebras, a genet (small nocturnal cat that we had never seen before), and warthogs which Christa chases away as they are already fat and don’t need extra feeding. She makes a noise like a leopard and the warthogs run away!

We shared a lovely braai, more stories and left feeling like we now have 2 more like-minded friends. Lucky us!

I left a bag there and we had to go back and collect it the next morning. As we were leaving, Christa had a message from her Whatsapp group, letting people know that there had been a lion kill near the lookout. We had been there the day before, so headed back there to find a large crowd looking across the river at a group of 5 lions lying on some sand in the shade. Earlier in the morning, the lions had killed a kudu right on the fenceline separating Kruger from Marloth Park. The electric fence was wrecked and the dead kudu was lying just on the Kruger side. Because of the cars and people, the lions had gone back across the river, but would return to the kudu later. And then the scavengers would come when the lions had finished.

I am beginning to think that Greg and I are the opposite of lion whisperers – we just don’t have much luck seeing lions. The day after our sundowners with Lilli and Christa, they saw 7 lions!

Lillli’s car “Toyo” a 1988 HJ60 Toyota Landcruiser parked in front of Clancy, a 1987 HJ75 Landcruiser

Christa feeding antelopes from her balcony

A lion kill, with a dead Kudu and a wrecked fence

the lions sleeping off the Kudu kill across Crocodile river

Us having Sundowners with Lilli and Christa

credit:original

Marloth Park, South Africa

After our first night back in South Africa at the Hippo Waterfront Lodge, we needed to figure out how to spend our final week here. We had this great idea that we’d just go into Kruger National Park for a few days, so we rolled up yesterday afternoon and discovered that all the campgrounds within driving distance were full … most of them up until the 15th! We later discovered that South Africans can visit Kruger for free this week, so our timing was particularly lousy. And yeah, our forward planning skills could be better too, but this is how we roll. (later edit: It turns out that this week it is free for South Africans to stay in Kruger, thus no campsites)

We did think that maybe we could go back to Bots and catch up with Anna and Henry if they were somewhere in southern Bots, but they’re heading to CKGR, so we nixed that idea.

Next thought was to visit Marloth Park, which adjoins Kruger and has a campground, other accommodation and lots of private residences in it. It’s kind of like a private, gated game reserve. We knew our friend Lilli had been, or possibly still is, here somewhere so thought it might be an interesting place to visit, and also maybe meet up with her if she’s still here. We have followed her overlanding travels for a while and nearly got to meet up with her in Namibia on our last trip, but we weren’t close enough to each other for that to happen.

Almost as soon as we’d driven through the gate, an antelopey-thing zapped across the road in front of us. There is no shortage of wildlife here. We tried to get a campsite but the campground was full. Being mindful that it was getting late in the afternoon and we try very hard not to drive at night, we asked the receptionist if there was anywhere else in the park we could try. She suggested the carpark behind the service station which we looked at and decided against. Then we consulted our beloved iOverlander and found African Bush Backpackers just a few kms away. The person who had added it mentioned that they allowed her to park in their carpark and camp there, so we thought we’d give it a try. Success! Lovely, friendly, helpful owners, Leon and Sarah, who were happy for us to park Clancy, run a power cord from the office and use their facilities. And, for lots of extra bonus points, they know Lilli and she’s still here, staying with a friend not far from here.

Thus ensued many messages via Instagram, organising a time and place to meet up. 11am this morning, can’t wait!

The wildlife just wanders past the Backpackers – so far we’ve seen zebras, a warthog, a bushbaby (much tinier than I imagined) and a couple of different types of antelopey-things. Leon puts hay out at this time of the year as there’s not much to graze on. There were a mama and tiny baby zebra, only 1 or 2 weeks old. The rest of the females are pregnant, they usually deliver their babies in January, so this new little one was a bit of a surprise.

Pregnant Zebras from the braai area of African bush backpackers

Crocodile River bordering Kruger National Park, just down the road from African Bush Backpackers

the border fence Kruger National Park, just down the road from African Bush Backpackers

Camped on the driveway at African Bush Backpackers

Missing Moz already

After 3 nights at Areia Branca Lodge, we started heading south towards Maputo. On our last afternoon, we had a long visit from the Lodge owners’ 7 year old son Eric. He had a lovely time playing with the remote controls for the LED lights in our living area, changing the lights’ colours and making them flash, and arranging all the stuff on our carpet-lined walls. He told us that he’d had malaria and so had his mum, dad and brothers. The next morning he showed me his fish tank which had 2 newly-caught prawns, 4 puffer fish, a sand fish and some other fish.

We spent another night at our favourite Moz ‘resort’, Sunset Beach and yes, I had another crayfish dinner. Then last night we stayed at Esperanca do Mar, a coastal ‘resort’ about 30kms north of Maputo. Our GPS took us down a very sandy track to the back entrance of the place – we missed the sign pointing us down a much better, more direct road but we used it this morning to leave. We were shown to a campsite with a private bathroom, but Clancy couldn’t get past a low-hanging branch, and a longer, alternate route was completely blocked by thorny branches. I told the caretaker that we really just wanted a place to park for the night, cos we’re completely self-sufficient. She agree to let us camp outside a 2-bedroom cabin and use its bathroom for R200 AUD$20, which was a vast improvement on the R520 AUD$52 that she wanted to charge us for the campsite with the private bathroom. That’s a ridiculous price for a campsite! We wouldn’t have paid it, would have gone elsewhere. I’d misinterpreted the pricing, thinking she was quoting in Moz metacais, and there are 4 MZN to the Rand. I should have realised that the pricing in MZN was too cheap, but it just confuses me when prices aren’t quoted in local currency.

We drove through the outskirts of Maputo this morning and headed west to the Moz/SA border at Ressano Garcia/Lebombo. There’s a well-known scam on the Ring Road just out of Maputo – the road isn’t finished yet and there’s a bit of a detour through a few side streets. Local teenage boys try to earn money by ‘showing you the way’, and we had several offers including one on my side who tried to hang on to Clancy for a while. With 2 GPS and a few vehicles in front of us, we didn’t need any help.

The border crossing was fairly smooth, although there was some confusion about the stamp in my entry visa. I think the Immigration officer thought it should have been embossed rather than just stamped, but as we’d come in through a very small border post with no fancy stuff at all, he finally accepted that the stamp was legit and I hadn’t just done it myself. Ha! As if!

Just outside Immigration and Customs on the Moz side, a table was set up with 2 workers offering free malaria testing. We’ll do that, thanks very much. Drop of blood on a slide, mixed with 3 drops of solution, wait a few minutes, read the results. Both negative, thankfully, but we do have antimalarial treatment medication if we need it.

The South African side was fine until we tried to get a TIP Temporary Import Permit for Clancy. We’d read that it can be a bit like extracting teeth, getting one at Lebombo, so we were prepared for a degree of difficulty.

Up until now we have used a Carnet, sort of like a passport for the car, but it expires in November and we have to return it to the AAA Australian Automobile Association. We want to leave Clancy in SA until early next year, so need to switch to using TIPs instead, which allows us to bring Clancy into South Africa for up to 6 months at a time. The first Customs officer wasn’t sure about any of it, so she called her colleague, who informed us that we must use the Carnet, and then go to Pretoria to get it sorted out. Um, no, we’re not doing that. First woman called her supervisor, who was incredibly helpful and understood exactly what we wanted after it was (again) explained. He also took the time to explain it all to the first Customs officer, so hopefully she is now better informed about the process. From then, it was easy, we got our TIP and were on our way.

And hey, we got through a whole country with no flat tyres. Hurrah!

We called into a shopping centre in Nelspruit and went grocery shopping at Checkers. Wow, there was so much choice and so many things and stuff we hadn’t seen in a while. We’re staying just out of Nelspruit tonight at the Hippo Waterfront Lodge. We’ve heard hippos but haven’t seen any.

So, a few thoughts about our time in Moz. When we first arrived, I asked Greg what he wanted to do while we were there. He wanted to spend time at the beach. I wanted to eat seafood and spend time at the beach. I’d say we achieved what we set out to do. Even though Moz is a much poorer country than Angola, we saw far fewer beggars. Having noted that though, both countries have a large percentage of their populations living at subsistence level.

As we were driving south from Pafuri, I really couldn’t work out what the locals ate apart from beef and goat – they weren’t growing any crops. When we got to the coast, we saw a lot of agriculture, mostly small plots being grown for the household’s consumption. Lots of cassava, which we also saw in parts of Angola. Here’s an interesting article about how to prepare it safely to avoid cyanide poisoning. I saw it for sale at the market I visited in Inhambane with Johnny, but didn’t buy any.

There’s a general election next month and the ruling party, Frelimo, has plastered the country with posters, flags and banners. I predict that after the election, the majority of those flags and banners will become shawls, skirts, sarongs and home furnishings. We’ve already seen one woman wearing one as a skirt and another using one as a shawl. You read it here first, folks.

One of my abiding memories of Moz will be the red and white colours of a lot of the shops in towns and villages. 3 brands have used bars, food shops, restaurants, cafes and mobile phone shops to advertise their products. Vodacom, Mac Mahon beer and Coca Cola have all plastered their advertising over buildings everywhere. We drank 2M ‘dos m’ beers a few times and enjoyed them.