Fast forward some years later and here he was, or just had been, in Lilongwe. “He go yesterday”. “We cycle together”, said Tokuru, a  tiny Japanese man about to pedal off somewhere into the city. “I need to find new tyre”, he said showing me the ripped rubber on the walls of his front tyre.

I later thought back to my time in Kathmandu. That Romanian cyclist, who I was never going to forget on account of the fact that he spent his week in Kathmandu having a trailor made to transport an enormous wooden scuplture,  had given me a spare tyre. For the last 15,000km in Africa I’ve been carrying two!

I returned the following day and gave Tokuru one of two Schwalbe XR folding tyres. “Sugoi desu” ’ (It’s amazing) came the reply. Well I hope the tyres I’m running and the one remaining are enough to take me the 5000+ kilometres that I estimate to be left on this journey.

The plan from Lilongwe had been to head towards Zambia, but for several reasons I’m now in possession of a Mozambican transit visa and about to return there en-route to Zimbabwe.

One reason is that the Mozambican visa, short as it is, (3 days) was cheaper and could be paid for in Kwatcha and picked up the same day from the embassy in Lilongwe (Zambian visas reportedly have to be paid for in US $, which I don’t, or didn’t at the time possess). The second reason was that the mosquito net distribution using nets funded by people supporting the Against Malaria Foundation through the Big Africa Cycle, was taking place south of Lilongwe on the way towards the Mozambique border. I had also heard from other cyclists that the road I into Zambia was pretty dull to cycle.

I didn’t see Tokuru again. We weren’t staying at the same place and he hadn’t made his mind up about which way he was going, although told me he knew of seven Japanese cyclists touring Africa, including Hiromu.

For the first time since passing through Kampala I visited an International School in Lilongwe. The welcome and reception were tremendous. Over 400 Primary School children came specially dressed in colours representing the Malawian national flag to hear me talk about The Big Africa Cycle. Two days later I returned to speak to the Senior School and was given a generous bundle of Kwatcha, which had been fundraised by the School for the Against Malaria Foundation.

Unfortunately Malawian Kwatcha is not one of Africa’s strongest currencies. Outside of Malawi the only person who’d take it off you might be a Malawian, and even within Malawi changing it into a hard currency like US $ or South African Rands is near impossible. Following the departure of the British Ambassador last year there is far less foreign aid coming into Malawi (the UK made up most of the foreign aid coming to Malawi). This subsequently means far less foreign currency, which in turn explains the lack of fuel. This is my understanding anyhow. Everyone wants $ so no-one is really willing to sell them. Banks will only change the money if you have an account with them. I only discovered this latter part on the morning I was leaving Lilongwe with the uncomfortably think wad of notes in my front pannier.

They stayed there, with the pannier never far from sight, for the next two days as I followed the main road south from Lilongwe. “If only the roads were as clear as the network”, read a billboard advertising one of Malawi’s mobile telecommunication companies on the way out of Lilongwe. Not sure Airtel had Malawi in mind when they thought this one up. The road was typically free of motorised traffic and as well-paved and scenic to cycle as most of the others in Malawi.

In Ntcheu I found the Concern Universal Office and spent the following two days helping to distribute a fraction of the 250,000 mosquito nets which are being handed out here. During the rainy season malaria is particularly prevalent with the surface water that provides a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Over 1500 of these nets had been funded by people who’ve donated to the Against Malaria Foundation through this website, so being involved in the distribution was important for me.

The logistics of distributing such a vast sum of nets requires a great deal of time and labour. Each village and every household had been registered in a census by district health officials with the number of sleeping spaces in each household determining how many bed-nets were given out. People assembled at a designated distribution point and waited for their names to be called out, before coming forward and placing a thumb-print next to their name when they had received a net. Even with over one thousand nets being given out to several villages at a time I found the name lists and the number of nets almost matched exactly with those who were present to receive them. In order to prevent anyone from re-packaging and possibly selling the nets the plastic wrappers were collected and burnt at the end of the distribution – not great for the environment, but it seemed the best solution.

In 6 months time district health officials will conduct a post-distribution follow-up to see how these nets are being used, and review the incidence rate of malaria as recorded at district health clinics since the distribution.

This is the third and possibly last bed-net distribution I will be involved with, but your continued support for the Against Malaria Foundation is much appreciated. I’d like to hit £20,000 as a fundraising total, so there is some way to go.

Fortunately I managed to dispense with the bundle of kwatcha in Ntcheu by handing it over to Concern Universal. They will pay it into the local bank from where the $700+ will be transferred to Against Malaria in the coming weeks.

Tomorrow I will cross back into Mozambique, albeit very briefly. There is a about 200km separating me from the border with Zimbabwe. South Africa is getting closer…

I think Nkata bay’s foreigner head-count probably doubled over Xmas and New Year with all the young Americans here. It’s a good enough guess that if you meet an American in Africa who isn’t working for an NGO or spreading the word of God then he or she will be a Peace Corp. I’ve met them in many other countries deemed ‘stable’ enough for young college graduates with fresh ideas about solving Africa’s woes to live in for 2 years. Most seem to live as frugal an existence as possible during their time in the ‘bush’, and then blow their stipend in a few weeks of travel and partying.

The altitude calculation was fairly accurate; nothing like starting a new year with a good climb to digest from the saddle. As for the rain, well the country and its crops have been waiting so long for it that I knew it was only a matter of time before I got wet.

A long time ago I possessed a pair of waterproof trousers and a jacket. They remained squashed in the bottom of a front pannier for so many months that when a Ghanaian immigration official waived the fact that I’d over-stayed my visa I decided to part with them. The only other time I’ve really felt I needed them were when it rained coming through the rift valley in Kenya. Rain at altitude in Africa is cold and dispiriting. In places like the Congo I was quite happy to get soaked and wait for the sun to come out.

Here in Malawi I’m back in the rift valley. When I arrived in Mzuzu (1250m) I decided it was time to find a waterproof jacket. Like most other sub-Saharan African towns Mzuzu has a second hand clothes market, where for 500 Kwatcha (£2) I bought an anorak with ‘Acer’ written on the back.

As far as I know Acer make laptops and not rain jackets. Was an Acer employee somewhere in the World given a company jacket to hand out leaflets in the rain I wonder? If so he would have come to the same conclusion about the jacket as I did shortly after leaving Mzuzu – that it was not fully waterproof.

Well I kind of knew what to expect. It’s more of a shower jacket/wind breaker. When it seriously rains in this part of the World I don’t think any waterproof clothing will keep you dry for very long. Buying a gore-tex jacket is surely a waste of money for much of sub-saharan Africa?

Cycling through a rainy season in Africa has its good and bad points. OK you get wet, and depending on the intensity and duration of the rain, as well as the altitude, cold, but more often than not it provides a refreshing change from the normal heat. A splash of water from a passing vehicle is more pleasant than a mouthful of dust, and the scenery is so much greener.

The maize farmers must be happy. That means about 80% of the population. Whereas some countries in Africa blanket their cultivatable land with cassava, here in Malawi maize is the food staple. Sure enough there are fields of tobacco, sweet potato, groundnuts, and also cassava, but it’s maize one sees everywhere. I’m sat writing this in the country’s capital, Lilongwe, and rather than being surrounded by blocks of concrete you can guess what’s growing amongst the litter on the other side of the cane fence?

Heading north

Devla Murphy, in her depressing analysis of this part of the World when she cycled through 20 years ago (her book The Ukimwi Road focussed on the Aids epidemic), wrote that “Few places in the World can rival the beauty of the Nyika plateau”. For someone as well travelled as that I was naturally inclined to follow in her cycle-tracks.

The trouble with reaching the Nyika National Park is that there are no easy ways to get there. With an average altitude above 2000 metres the Park hugs the border with Zambia in the northwest of Malawi. It was kind of off-route, but having already come north from Blantyre I decided a little more of a detour in Malawi to take in its best sites before heading to Zambia was worth it.

I never made it in the end. I was equally as interested in re-visiting Livingstonia, a town founded by Scottish missionaries and named after you know who, but what my map showed as a track connecting the park with the place was a mountain path, at least according to the locals, which in the rainy season wasn’t worth continuing to investigate.

As it was I followed a terrible road north from a place called Rumphi. Terrible because when it rained I took the road with me. Mud quickly jammed between wheel and mudguards, bringing me to a steady halt. This has only happened in a few other places in Africa (Congo, Morocco), but this particular consistency of mud was enough for me to decide that removing the rear mudguard, which sits closer to the tyre, was a sensible move to make.

David Livingstone never came to Livingstonia, despite a local resident assuring me that he did. Malaria finally got the better of Africa’s most famous Victorian explorer and he died in 1873. That was 24 years before Livingstonia, at its present site, was founded. Initially Scottish missionaries had chosen the lake shore by Cape Maclear as a place to create and name a mission in honour of their famous forefather, but when malaria claimed lives there they moved it, first to another lake-shore location, and then finally way up on an escarpment, some 900 metres or so above the lake.

Livingstonia is about as un-African a place in climate and character that I’ve visited on the continent. Firstly it has a noticeably cool climate and is surrounded by pine trees and secondly all the buildings look like they have been transported from a Victorian village film-set.

My bike was in a mess when I arrived, and the mud-covered panniers soon made a mess of the wooden floorboards in Stone House. I stayed here on Christmas Day some 11 years ago and remembered the sweeping view down to the lake to be just as dramatic. This photo doesn’t really do it justice.

The descent down ws equally dramatic. Now this would have been a lung-burster of a climb had I been approaching Livingstonia from the lake. Something like 22 steep switchbacks on a rocky track wind their way up an almost vertical escarpment from the lake. Granny-gear stuff all the way.

Going down it was fingers on brakes, until the road straightened out in view of the lake. Now I was back on tarmac and finally heading south again – the placid surface of the lake on my left and verdant green cloud-topped hillsides to my right.

The road soon climbed again, as I knew it would, and when dark clouds rolled in and blanketed my last views of the lake, I knew I’d get wet.

Camping outside in the rainy season is best avoided in Africa, unless you want to test out how waterproof or not your tent is. And even if you do stay dry after an all-night deluge, packing a wet tent away in the morning, which is now double in weight, doesn’t make for a good start to the day.

The answer is naturally to look for a building, but probably not someone’s house as it will often be too small to accommodate a drenched mzungu, who also doesn’t want to feel like he is inconveniencing a total stranger by asking to sleep there. Well thanks to Livingstone’s tribe, one doesn’t need to go that far in rural Africa to find a Church or School, preferably one with a roof. I’ve slept in countless over the last few years. There’s almost always someone close by to ask permission, which is important, and plenty of space on the benches, tables, chairs or pews, to dry out what is wet. You also don’t feel like you are ‘getting in the way’ or disrupting whatever domestic scene you might have stumbled upon. Occasionally someone who wants to take responsibility for this unannounced stranger arriving will step forward to complicate matters, but this is usually in the form of an invitation to sleep in a house, and depending on the circumstances one can decide which is better.

There have been many moments during my time in Africa where I’ve been left thinking ‘now what if this was the other way round’? What if this African who is helping me out here had arrived in a small village in rural England and parked his bike next to the Primary School and asked the head-teacher ‘Is it possible to sleep here as it’s getting late and I won’t arrive in the next town? I don’t cycle at night because it’s dangerous and now it’s raining so I’m looking for somewhere dry to pitch my tent’. I’d like to think that the head-teacher would show some interest and sympathy in this stranger, and maybe find an outhouse or somewhere else dry, but know more likely the response would be something along the lines of ‘Afraid not – I think there’s a campsite or a B&B a few miles down the road’. Africa would be a lot more of a challenging place to travel by bicycle if I was met with that response on a regular basis.

Whilst I had enjoyed a dry night listening to rain pummelling down on the tin roof of a Primary school, I think Fabio had taken the bush camp option. We met early the next morning. It was easy to guess he was Italian by the colour of his bike – sprayed red, green and white. He’d recently entered Malawi by way of the ferry service that connects the Tanzanian lake-side village of Mbamba bay with Nkata Bay.

Fabio had cycled from Dar es Salaam, where he said he lived working as a sailor. I never quite got to know what he meant by this. With the ear and eye piercing, and bandana holding back his unkempt blonde hair he made a better job of looking like a pirate.

He was heading back to Tanzania because he had to return to Italy next month, but asked about my trip, took particular interest in my chain guard, then paused a moment before throwing his arms out in front of him and declaring ‘This, this is what I want’. I turn 40 next year and want to mark it with a big trip. Five years around the World. It changes you yes? I don’t think you can ever go back like before”.

I nodded in agreement. “You’re probably right”, I said as the rain started to fall and we exchanged contacts before parting ways.

I returned to Mzuzu and stayed in the same shoe-box sized room I’d been in the week before. “Please place your condoms in the bin after use” read a notice on the back of the door. I imagined the poor cleaner having to go round emptying the bins each morning. The 3ft high speakers blasting music out of the nearby pool bars drowned out any other nocturnal vocals.

From Mzuzu I cycled on the M1 to Lilongwe. Like the M1 in the UK, Malawi’s M1 is also the country’s main highway, but there is a major difference. Here the M1 has even less traffic than a farm track in deepest Dorset. Malawi’s fuel shortage continues to wreck havoc for motorists, but makes its beautifully well-paved highways a dream to cycle on.

There were a lot of pine trees at the roadside to begin with, and it was only on the second day of cycling through the Viphya Forest Reserve that I found the page in my Bradt guidebook that said this was the largest artificial forest in Africa. It would be much larger if half the trees hadn’t been felled.

Out here there were few villages on the roadside, but children still seemed to run out from nowhere – the call of Mzungu quickly followed by a ‘give me money’. At one time this used to irritate me. Whether I’ve grown so used to expect it or the that fact that it’s said in mock-seriousness amongst giggles here in Malawi, I don’t seem to care all that much now.

When the forest stopped and the road began to flatten out the maize fields started again. I stopped frequently in small towns where women sell steamed maize cobs at the roadside and the men take charge of the roasted ones. There is a scarcity of street food in this country so one makes do with what is on offer. Maize cobs and cold coke make for a good 20 minute break, with a mango or two of course, whilst lunch is frequently nsima (maize flour mixed with water and tasting as bland on its own as it sounds) with beef and pumpkin/potato leaves. Fresh chili helps liven things up a bit – a killer for sunburnt lips though!

I have no doubt that maize was probably growing beside the international airport’s runway when I realised I was about to enter the country’s capital. I think there were two sets of traffic lights on the way in. Far too easy and uneventful.

At first appearance Lilongwe looks like it has about as much character as Blantyre. It was going to be my end point here in Malawi. The plan had been to head west to Zambia, but I don’t have US $ to pay for an expensive visa at the border and I merely wanted to transit the country to enter Zimbabwe. A cheaper and possibly better option is to head back through Mozambique for a few days, which will also bring me to Zimbabwe. I’m off on my bike in a minute down to the embassy.

One more thing if you’ve bothered to read this entire 2500 word post. There is a massive distribution of mosquito nets taking place in Malawi right now, which is being carried out by the NGO Concern Universal. Some of these nets have been funded by those of you kind enough to donate to the Against Malaria Foundation through my journey. I’m planning to travel down to Ntcheu, where the distribution is taking place, later this week. Any donations that are made now obviously aren’t going to fund nets being handed out here, but it seems a timely opportunity to remind people that your contributions are widely appreciated. $5 or £3 guarantees that a mosquito net gets distributed to someone in need here. And bed-nets really are the best means of malaria prevention. I was happy to read a few months back that the Against Malaria Foundation was rated top charity by the watchdog organisation ‘givewell’ for what it does.

“He loves his beer. Packed eight crates for the trip”, boasted the blonde girlfriend, emerging from the roof of their vehicle where they’d slept the night. “How long are you travelling for?” I asked. Just 10 days. Drove up from Joburg with these guys.

Parked close by was a similar vehicle owned by another Afrikaans speaking couple. With two young kids and a whole catalogue-ful of what looked like new camping equipment to unpack they made my sun-faded tent look somewhat inferior. “That’s seen better days”, remarked the red-faced beer drinker. “But it’s a hubba hubba. A lakka tent.” When several more 4x4s arrived later in the day with Afrikaans being shouted back and forth across the campsite I realised that Cape Maclear, on the southern shores of Lake Malawi, was going to be busy with South Africans for Christmas.

Christmas day for me on the other hand began onboard the Ilala, Malawi’s most distinguished colonial survivor. In continual service since 1951, shortly after it had been transported in parts from the Mozambican coast to be assembled beside the lake, the MV Ilala services a dozen or so ports on Africa’s third largest lake. It chugs its way north once a week from Monkey Bay, the southern most terminus, and one of only two ports with a dock. This mattered to me. Transporting bike and bags from shore to boat is never easy when alone. The bike needs to be lifted awkwardly, bags often get separated and it’s hard to keep a watchful eye on ones belongings, particularly when it’s dark

.

Experience with boat travel in other parts of Africa had me prepared for a chaotic, heavily delayed and potentially dangerous journey. Part of me wishes to say it was thankfully none of these. The Ilala was altogether the most civilised and uneventful boat I’ve used to travel on in Africa. Second and third class passengers sat calmly on the lower deck and those with a mostly paler complexion occupied the upper deck. It was very colonial. There was no shouting or drama. Where were the arguments about seating arrangements, the livestock falling overboard, the collisions, break-downs and overcrowding? – basically all what one expects from boat travel in Africa. On almost every other boat I’ve used in Africa I’ve been the only foreign face. On the Ilala there seemed to be as many foreigners getting onboard at Monkey Bay as there were local Malawians.

The biggest drama might well have been that a passenger with an economy ticket spent most of his time on the first class deck. I used the well-stocked bar and the white faces up here as an excuse. They had all paid several times what I had and were entitled to be sitting where they were. I occasionally popped down to the lower deck to eat (rice, beans and beef) and greet those I should have been sitting and sleeping alongside, but there was far more room and fresh-air up above. It was wrong and I knew it. At first I had the idea that I’d settle things the African way by buying the ticket inspectors a few beers, but it never came to that after I got talking to them on a friendly basis. After hearing I was alone and not married, one of the ticket inspectors took it upon himself to find me a wife on board.

The Ilala took on more passengers and cargo as she docked at new ports and headed north, but where I had expected local boats and dug-out canoes to paddle out with produce for sale, I found none. The Ilala even had its own passenger boat with engine to transport people ashore

The other foreigners onboard were a range of ages and nationalities and the open-air bar area made for a lively scene much of the day. There was a time on this journey where foreign faces were so rare that conversation would usually occur when you met someone clearly as far away from home shores as yourself . Now mzungus, as we continue to be known, are so common at times that a mere nod of the head seems to suffice. At least this ensures one doesn’t have to answer and ask the same ‘where are you from’? and ‘where are going’? kind of questions. Most foreigners disembarked at Likoma island, which is actually within Mozambican waters on the lake, but I continued to Nkata bay, arriving in good time to find a goat being barbecued on the beach for Christmas day lunch.

Like many other foreigners who pass this way I eased myself into the relaxed lake-side atmosphere. The camping was scenic and cheap and the company an eclectic mix of characters. With the inevitable talk of New Year parties it became easy to stay for a week. And when the hangover cleared, people started leaving and I found myself feeling restless I did what I’ve done so many times over the past few years– pack the panniers, load up the bike and start spinning those pedals.

]]> http://www.thebigafricacycle.com/general-posts/3591/feed 21 http://www.thebigafricacycle.com/general-posts/and-the-winner-goes-to-highlights http://www.thebigafricacycle.com/general-posts/and-the-winner-goes-to-highlights#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:52:44 +0000 Peter http://www.thebigafricacycle.com/?p=3569 Another year passes by on the roads of Africa; this one spent between the mountains of northern Cameroon and the tranquil shores of Lake Malawi. I managed a modest 12,000km of cycling -  about the same as last year, and crossed through 8 countries.

There were jungles and big rivers, endless palm-fringed beaches, bribe-demanding immigration officers and chaotic urban traffic. Last year I wrote a post summing up some of the memorable places and experiences of 2010, so here is a similar list of random highlights and lowlights from 2011. Feel free to comment and add a category. And a belated Happy New Year to all those who’ve followed the journey, whether it be from the beginning  or more recently.

Destination I’d most like to return to: Zanzibar. The famous spice island of the Indian Ocean is popular with tourists for a good reason. It might not be wild, untamed and adventurous Africa, but the authentic Swahili culture and food, beautiful white sand beaches and fascinating history all compacted together make this one great place to cycle.

Most interesting week of the year: The one where I travelled by boat up the mighty Congo river. This was/is the Africa of boyhood imagination. A Conradian journey through the equatorial jungle, and one that very few westerners have taken in recent decades.

Worst day of the year: 5th July. I returned to what had been the locked room of a Guest House in Kenya to find it open and most of my valuables missing.

Best new piece of equipment: In light of the above I bought a key-hole blocker. This small piece of metal jams into a keyhole and prevents someone with a spare key from entering a locked room.

Most scenic country: Rwanda. I only spent 1 week here, but would have happily spent longer. Wonderfully green, clean, peaceful and challenging to cycle.

Hardest day on the road: Northern Mozambique: 90km of hot sandy tracks, including two bridge/boat-less river crossing and a lot of mangrove swamps. I pushed the bike for half the day and finished it by falling into the Indian Ocean completely exhausted.

Most expensive/over-priced country: Mozambique. Not quite sure why one of Africa’s poorest countries is also, at least in terms of accommodation, probably one of the most expensive. Paying $10+ per night to pitch a tent in Africa isn’t budget travel.

Most Awkward moment: Being told by my long-term Japanese cycling companion that he’d read my website and found out what I’d been writing about him.

Hardest border crossing: Exiting Central African Republic (CAR) for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The CAR immigration officials demanded money to have my passport stamped and returned to me. After an hour or so I settled for buying them beers before crossing the Ubangui River to DRC where a similar experience awaited me.

Most water consumed in one day: 11 litres. Brutally hot weather on the road south from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania had me continually stopping to drink water with no toilet stops to show for it. The 11 litres doesn’t include the coca-cola stops.

Country I think about returning to the most: DRC. Every day was an adventure in this huge country. All those unexplored rivers and roads and the villages where foreign faces have never been seen before made this the most exciting of travel destinations.

Best beer award: Primus in the DRC. There was something distinctly African about drinking one of the continent’s most famous beers with Congolese music playing in the background. I was also a fan of the 720ml bottle size.

Worst beer award: Carlsberg in Malawi. Am as unimpressed by the size of the bottle (the first country in Africa where beer comes in bottles smaller than 500ml) as I am by the taste and lack of alternative beers

Most unexpected telephone call: Tim Butcher, author of Blood River, calling me from South Africa when I was in Kisangani to ask if I could give a copy of his book to one of the characters in it who helped him organise boat transport on the Congo River.

Busiest road: Mombasa Highway in Kenya. One constant stream of trucks taking goods from the coast to half a dozen countries. Fortunately I was only on it for 50km.

Most noiticeable difference when crossing a border: Crossing from DRC to Rwanda. Whilst the former was chaotic, poor and massively underdeveloped, the latter was calm, clean and much more advanced in terms of infrastructure and general development.

Most worthwhile detour: Cycling around the base of Mt Kilimanjaro. The ride took me from arid Massai-dwelling villages to deeply forested woodlands, all the time with Africa’s highest mountain looming in the background.

Friendliest country to spend time in: Uganda and Malawi. These two anglophone countries are full of smiling faces and eager to get-to-know-you English speakers.

African language I learnt the most of: Swahili. Starting from as far back as eastern Congo, Swahili was spoken in parts of Rwanda and Uganda and then more seriously in Kenya, and particularly Tanzania. I was even able to use it for the first few weeks in northern Mozambique. I learnt and spoke the most during my time in Tanzania.

Biggest made to feel like an idiot moment: Counting my Malawian money that I’d received in exchange for Mocambican metacais on the the black market and realising that I’d been cheated.

Best food award: Tanzania: I never seemed to get tired of chappatis, the fried street food, fresh fish on the coast, spicy biriyani and pilau and the road-side fruit and nut sellers.

Most restless night of sleep: In a maternal clinic in the DRC. During the night someone died and another gave birth a few metres from my tent. It was pitched black and all I can remember was a lot of screaming, crying, the sound of drums outside and rain lashing on the corrugated roof.

Most over-heard song at the roadside: Nwa baby I don’t think there is a country in sub-Saharan Africa where this Nigerian song has not been played to death during 2011.

]]> http://www.thebigafricacycle.com/general-posts/and-the-winner-goes-to-highlights/feed 20 http://www.thebigafricacycle.com/general-posts/into-africas-warm-heart http://www.thebigafricacycle.com/general-posts/into-africas-warm-heart#comments Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:21:26 +0000 Peter http://www.thebigafricacycle.com/?p=3549 Poor countries with well-paved roads and high fuel prices make good news for foreign cyclists. Welcome to little land-locked Malawi, which surely has the highest fuel costs on the continent? It’s something you probaby didn’t know, unless you were unfortunate to be living and driving a car here.

A litre of petrol when available here costs 380 Kwatcha (£1.50) from a fuel pump, and more like £2-3 on the black market from roadside jerry cans. Only the very rich can afford to have a car and run it  – true throughout much of Africa, but more so in Malawi.

Malawi’s fuel crisis just seems to be one of many problems currently facing the country. There is also the lack of rains ruining the vital maize crop, the fall in the price of the country’s biggest cash-crop earner – tobacco, massive increases in the price of foodstuffs due to fuel costs, and then foriegn aid which the country so depends upon being affected by the departure of the British ambassador. He was kicked out of the country earlier this year for calling the President an autocrat.

One wonders how Malawians still smile, for the warm heart of Africa, as the country gets dubbed in tourist literature, remains just that.

Besides the smiles, Malawi greeted me on arrival with a free 30-day stay and a mountain to climb. At first I had no intention to scale Mt Mulanje. Besides lacking a backpack, waterproof clothes or having any information about the mountain, I naturally assumed there would be some irritating complications like permits to apply for and entry fees. Fortunately there were none of these and the cost of a guide was about as cheap as I could have hoped for. It might not have been Kilimanjaro, but hardly anyone seems to hike up onto the Mulanje massif and the views below to tea plantations and waterfalls were well worth the steep ascent.

Almost everyone seems to speak English and use a bicycle in Malawi, if not to transport goods, then as a taxi service. This makes for great on-the-road company. Part of me feels sorry for those whose livelihood depends on the fuel situation (which in truth is almost everyone) but the sound and sight of bicycles dominating a national highway might make Malawi one of the best countries to cycle through in Africa.

It was on one such bicycle-dominated highway that I left the scenic surroundings of the Mulanje massif and headed to the country’s commercial capital – Blantyre. At first I wondered if I’d arrived during a national holiday. The centre seemed to be about as alive as the person whose name the city was named in honour of. David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland. Anywhere else would be abuzz with motorbike taxis and bustling street stalls. Surely people should have been out on the street deploring the economic situation and the fuel crisis?

I stayed with the Country Director of a large NGO here. Having married a Ghanian and lived and worked there and in Nigeria he agreed that Blantyre and Malawi was lacking the West African vibe. “Great place if you want the quiet life with family” Pretty dull otherwise.

From Blantyre I’ve moved north. Totally the wrong direction, but seeming that Malawi is so small and scenic (I came here 11 years ago) I decided it was worth to see more of the country. Particularly Lake Malawi, Africa’s 3^rd largest body of fresh water, which is where I await a journey on the MV Illala.

Just say goodbye to sand and sea

You turn around to take a final peek

And you see why it’s so unique to be

Among the lovely people living free

Upon the beach of sunny Mozambique”

(Bob Dylan)

Remember that post I wrote not so long go about tips for surviving Africa? Well here is another one. When changing money at a border crossing make sure it is YOU who is the last one to count it. Sounds obvious I know. Commonsense surely? Maybe an explanation will salvage some of my stupidity. It was a swift and slick operation; one done many times before I’m sure.

First let me go back to the Indian Ocean, albeit very briefly because once I crossed the narrow bridge connecting Mozambique Island and the mainland I was looking over my shoulder somewhat sadly at the turquoise shallows and rustling palm trees for the last time. They’ve been a comforting companion on the skyline over the past several months, but in reality the sand and heat have been more of a feature. A cycle-tour of the east African coastline would be much more suitable if you strapped your bicycle to the mast of a dhow and let the trade winds carry you between the coral islands and mangrove shallows.

Well I’ve definitely made use of dhow transport, but salt and sand don’t go well with moving bike parts. The landscape has been mostly flat of late, which after a while becomes more of a mental fatigue to cycle through than the physical tiredness one experiences from mountainous surroundings.

Mangoes, Cashew nuts and enormous granite boulders dominated my attention as I rolled over smooth tarmac on a blissfully quiet road heading away from the ocean. Let me start with the mangoes.

There are probably a number of places in Africa that could quite easily host a mango festival. Imagine a village where metre-high triangular mounds of them lie piled at the roadside like some feature of a children’s play-park. One wants to dive in there and emerge throwing them up in the air. Well there was one particular village a short way from the coast that had me thinking this. These mounds consisted of the small yellow variety that kids spent their time sucking on for half the day – more a worthless windfall variety in the height of the mango season. If they ever made it to a UK supermarket they’d still sell for at least a pound a piece though.

Much more of interest are the large green ones with dew-drop like nipples at the bottom. Their fleshy orange interior doesn’t leave you picking strings out of your teeth for the rest of the day. These mangoes will be found in smaller piles and sold to passing motorists. The trouble is that there are far more mangoes than there are passing motorists. If rural Africa had power I’m sure a few enterprising individuals would buy a blender and sell mango smoothies at the roadside. They would be a hit I’m sure. Just one feature of the international mango festival I had in my mind.

At the same time as the mango festival there could be a cashew nut festival. It seems Cashew nut trees are a defining feature of former Portuguese colonies. Guinea Bissau, that small west-African country I passed through last year, was covered in them and I venture to guess parts of Angola might be too? Cape Verde? Sao Tome and Principle? I believe the origin of the Cashew nut can be traced to Brazil, from where it found its way to Goa and then the shores of Africa. The Portuguese clearly had a thing for them. Well there weren’t so much as metre-high mounds of cashew nuts at the roadside (now that would be really impressive) but village after village of stalls where young boys leaned out into the road waving bowlfuls of them when a vehicle came into view.

I would have happily filled my panniers with kilos of them. Cashew nuts can travel whereas fresh mangoes can’t. The problem was a lack of cash, so I ended up trading tinned sardines for a bowlful of nuts. Both parties were happy. Tinned sardines are like caviar in rural Africa, but I’ve eaten hundreds of them on this journey and felt it was me who was getting the better deal.

Whilst Mozambique Island and its inhabitants left me with the impression that nothing had really changed from when I was last there 10 years ago, the city of Nampula had clearly expanded. New buildings of the tin-roofed, cheap-concrete and fast-to-construct variety one sees everywhere on the rural/urban fringe of Africa flanked the roadside as I navigated my way to an ATM machine and made my way out soon after.

The road had been gradually climbing and the scenery improving as I headed westwards. Once the mango and cashew trees sadly dwindled in popularity, the occurrence of these granite boulders, more scientifically known as inselbergs, increased in number. And this same road, which from a glance at the map looked like it should be carrying a lot of traffic (one of those red highways that are always less appealing than the yellow and white secondary roads) became even quieter. It was far more scenic and easy-going than many of those coastal stretches had been.

After greeting people in the local language, which changed from Makua to Lomwe as I left Nampula province for that of Zambezia, I soon reverted to speaking in English. In a Portuguese speaking country this doesn’t get one all that far, but with Anglophone Africa just over the border in Malawi I had little motivation to progress from the survival phrases (Tay comidas? - do you have food, Tay cerveja? – do you have beer? tenyo cansado – I’m tired) that one should muster in every country. In actual fact I haven’t consumed much beer at all in Mozambique. It’s usually not available when one pitches a tent in local villages, as I’ve been doing a lot of in recent weeks.

In the small town of Alto Molocue I rested from the midday heat by eating ice-cream. This seemed as incongruous a feature of a place that nobody visits as the large cinema that dominates the main road in nearby Gurue. At least the latter attracts a smattering of tourists, scenically located as it is amidst rolling hills of tea plantations and backed by Mt Namuli, Mozambique’s second highest peak at 2419m.

The young Austrian manager of the town’s only Guest House here didn’t agree with me when I suggested that $12 to pitch my tent in what was effectively the car-park out the back was somewhat expensive. In the end he gave me a room for the same price and later muttered something about it being too dangerous to camp as there were bandits in the town and they were out killing at night. When I asked what all this was about and tried to ascertain the moties of these ‘bandits’ whom no-one else had made mention of, he merely pinched my skin and said ‘you are white, they kill for nothing’. I never got a more coherent answer and concluded that either I was missing something or that this chap had not been long in Africa.

My rest day in Gurue was well timed. It rained for the entire day, during which I never saw that Austrian, and I naturally expected when I departed the following morning that it would be a wet and muddy road to the Malawian border. Instead the skies were a beautifully washed out shade of blue and the mountain slopes as lusciously green as nature could allow; certainly the most scenic landscape that Mozambique had offered.

And this brings me up to the border and that money-changing incident I began writing about at the beginning of this blog.

It was all very simple. I had casually asked around in shops and market stalls in the border town of Milange to know what the Mozambican metacais was worth against the Malawian Kwatcha. Rates varied wildly, with 1 Metacais equalling anything between 5-9 Kwatcha. So when one of the many moneychangers close to the market gave me the best rate I decided it was time to change. I had 2400 metacais remaining (£55). A quick calculation with the calculator meant I should be receiving 21800 Kwatcha.

By this time another man appeared holding a wad of what are possibly Africa’s largest bank notes – in size that is. I produced my crisp Metacais and was handed a thick bundle of 500 Kwatcha notes. I stood counting them out one by one. There was only 20500 Kwatcha. I counted it again and arrived at the same figure. The moneychanger looked perplexed. “Let me count it” he demanded with the manner of someone who could possibly not have been correct the first time. The bundle passed back and I watched him count it slowly again. Yes, there was only 20500 and therefore 1300 Kwatcha missing.

Another moneychanger was now called over from nearby and arrived with his own wad of Kwatcha. An extra 1000 Kwatcha was added to the main bundle, which I had kept a watch of. “And the 300 please”, I said not wanting to be outdone. Three 100 Kwatcha notes were added to the bundle to complete the 21800 total.I then took the thick wad and quickly buried it deep in my trouser pocket, walking away feeling smug that I’d got a good deal and not been cheated.

A short distance around the corner I found a quiet bar with some plastic tables and chairs outside. It was time to enjoy the last few Mozambican beers as I watched the evening street life and the sun setting just over the border in Malawi. I would cross the next morning.

The beer was ice cold and I ordered a second, but this was not before I pulled that wad out of my pocket and had a closer look at these large new African bank notes. I started counting again with the notes just under the table above my lap: 500, 1000, 1500, 2000…

It was when I got to around 4000 that I noticed this wad was too thin. I counted the rest of the notes quickly, finishing with the three 100 bills added at the end. I looked up then drained the rest of my beer. My first instinct was to run back to the market and look for the moneychangers, but they would have been long gone within minutes of me walking away. And so I signalled to the barman to bring me another beer.

It brought a smile to my face at first. Here I was feeling that 2 years on the African continent had brought me an accumulated level of street wisdom, and now I’d just fallen victim to possibly one of the oldest tricks in the book. Whilst I was thinking I’d got the upper hand by showing the amount was wrong, this was merely part of the ploy to cheat me out of even more!

I drank the second beer slowly and tried to piece together what had actually taken place. How was this wad now short by more than a third of the notes? I had watched this guy count it out after I had counted it. And then I’d watched him whist his friend handed him the missing remainder. Had I turned my head for a spilt second at some point? Had there been a two-way exchange of notes when the final 300 was passed over?

Nothing was completely clear. This had been a smooth operation. Part of me wanted to go back and actually congratulate the guys. “Well done chaps. You pulled a fine one off there. Now give me the rest of the money”. But ultimately I was angrier with myself. I just needed to count it one final time. Had there been any foul-play or suspicion in my mind I would have done. The time between watching the money counted out in front of me and the remainder being added before receiving the bundle was so very short that I took it and walked away. The difference in thickness from what was already a very thick bundle of notes I had never handled before was not sufficient for me to sense something wasn’t right.

I finished the second beer and tried to find excuses to vent my anger. It wasn’t a huge amount of money. The visa for Malawi was free and now I was just paying an unofficial entry fee. It was like dropping a £20 note on the street. I’d get over it soon enough. And besides, what I now had was closer to what I would have received had I changed the money in a bank. I could keep finding excuses all night. But the fact remained that it should have been ME who was the final one to count the money. I imagined the moneychangers giving each other high-fives as they spilt the winnings. I returned to my overpriced Guest House, drank another beer and looked at the map of Malawi.

Rivers run through it

The River Congo evokes all of the adventure and mystery of African travel, and a journey up or down this mighty serpent will be like no other you have taken before. Barges pushed by tug-boats make the 1800km-long journey between Kinshasa and Kisangani, and are effectively floating markets. Families live aboard them for weeks, as that is how long the journey in its entirety will take (there is no schedule and if you travel the whole way you can be aboard for anything between 2-4 weeks).

Going up that river today is just as Conrad described it over 100 years ago – ‘like going back in time’. River-side villages totally cut off from the modern World transport what they have from the jungle and river (ground-nuts, palm oil, dried fish, bats, monkeys) on small dug-out canoes – paddling out to tie alongside the barge as it slowly creeps up the river. It is an amazing spectacle and one not to be missed.

Aside from the main river itself, the DRC has thousands of small streams running through the forest. These make wonderful opportunities for a cool off and break from the sweaty cycling.

Boldly go: Pick your track

The bicycle really is the ultimate means of travel in the DRC as there is no public transport in most of the country. Locals load their bicycles with 100kg+ of goods and often walk for days to sell them in the next town. On a bicycle you can pretty much take any track that is marked on your map. Sometimes it will be no more than shoulder-width wide, only to suddenly open and bring you to an old-iron bridge crossing a river. Some of these jungle-tracks used to be actual roads when the Belgians were still in the Congo. Now the jungle has reasserted itself, but because the locals use bicycles to travel along them, you can too. It is an adventure cyclist’s paradise. Should you have a problem you won’t be far from a local with his Chinese-built steed willing to help.

Window to the past

When the Belgians left their only African possession they did so with an impressive network of roads, railways, Catholic Churches and other buildings. Apart from the mission churches, some of which are mighty impressive red-brick edifices, almost everything else is a crumbling and non-functioning reminder of the past. In one sense it is sad, but in another a fascinating window into what life must have been like 60 years ago in the DRC. Uncover some long grass at the roadside and you might find a stone marker denoting mileage to the next town. Poke your head around the cob-web filled rooms of a large mission and you’ll discover old machinery that would be better placed in a museum. Then there are the Portuguese names on river-side warehouses, the rusting train carriages being swallowed by the jungle, and the enormously incongruous houses/palaces where former political leaders such as Mobutu once lived. History is everywhere in this country – a place more developed half a century ago than it is now.

Music and beer

That’s two things, but they kind of go together in the DRC. Primus beer comes in wonderfully large 720ml bottles and has as good a distribution system as coca-cola (unfortunately they will cost a small fortune in rural areas due to the transport situation). If the beer is cold it means there is electricity, and if there is electricity then there is usually a stereo or TV where Congolese girls hypnotise the drinker and distract him from his beer as they shake their body to the infectious rhythm of Soukous, a music genre listened to far beyond the borders of the country.

Out in the forest, where there is no electricity and people can’t afford beer, palm-wine and drums make a good replacement. When tapped fresh from the tree palm-wine has a sweet, if somewhat acquired taste. Locals will love it if you drink it (I occasionally filled up a 1.5litre bottle with it). Every village in the DRC will have a church and the rhythmic sound of drums beating in the darkness as you lie sweating in your tent is one that will stay in your memory long after leaving.

The eastern rift valley

The eastern provinces of the DRC may be some of the most unstable, but they are also some of the most beautiful. Lush jungle-clad climbs take you up to 2000metres and above, before you descend to the shimmering blue surfaces of Lake Tanganyika and Lake Kivu. If you’ve got the money for it you can climb up a lava-spewing volcano near Goma or hang out with the mountain gorillas before crossing into Rwanda or Uganda. For those doing it on the cheap, swimming in the lakes comes free.

Some people said the island had changed since I first came here 10 years ago. Not the place it once was and all that. Back then I spent several weeks here: charmed, captivated and entranced by the atmosphere of this colonial treasure-chest.

Well the charm remains. Nothing has ‘really’ changed about Ilha de Mozambique (Mozambique Island). It’s that kind of forgotten place where change happens slowly. The crumbling villas, imposing white-washed churches and crowded squalor of the Macuti (palm-thatch) town where most of the island’s population live continue to leave the visitor with the same impression. This is a must-visit place in Africa, and one which probably sees far less visitors than it deserves.

I’m staying in the same place I did before, although the family had trouble remembering me. “I think you were fatter before?” asked Luis, the owner. “And you were slimmer” I replied laughing.

A 3km-long bridge connects what was once the capital of Mozambique with the mainland, but I arrived more fittingly by dhow, slowly tacking back and forth over the turquoise shallows as I watched the island’s features take form.

My journey up to here had continued along the coast, leaving Pemba’s tarmac on another dirt track towards Mecufi and the River Lurio. No bridges or boats again, but fortunately very little water as I followed bicycle-tyre tracks across a dry sandy riverbed to leave one province and enter another. I had now reached the limits of Swahili-speaking territory. Macua is the dominant local language spoken from now on.

The heat has been oppressive again – a daily furnace from about 7am and only saved by the occasional breeze. Colourless mud-hut villages have the shade of mango trees as a refuge. Here I frequently stopped to rest, and with mangoes now in season bought them whenever I could. They were one of the few things available at the roadside. In larger settlements bread is sometimes available. The options are minimal.

Rural infrastructure in Mozambique is comparable to what it was in the DRC. There is no accommodation and very little food. Village camping is by now a very familiar procedure for me in Africa, where most of the inhabitants of a place that may never have had a white face stop by in take great delight in observing how the unexpected foreigner constructs his home for the night, then prepares a meal of spaghetti and most often tinned sardines fried with onion and garlic. I rarely ever self-catered or camped in east Africa – street food and basic lodgings were cheap and easily available in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. In Mozambique they’re not. In one town I was directed to a Pensao (Guest House) where the Portuguese owner showed me a tiny room with an unmade bed. The heat inside was suffocating. He shrugged his shoulders when I replied that $12 was expensive, so I pedalled to the edge of the town and pitched my tent next to the mosque. I’m camping almost the whole time here.

Part of me could happily spend longer here on Mozambique Island, but my 30-day visa expires in 10 days and the cost/wait to extend it doesn’t feel worth the effort. Mozambique is the most expensive country I have come through on this journey.

After having followed the coast this far south I’m turning inland from here and bidding farewell to salt and sand. Looks like land-locked Malawi for Christmas.

1) The challenge

Not many people have heard of the Central African Republic (CAR), let alone cycled through it. Political instability, terrible infrastructure and countless road-blocks manned by gun-wielding police are just some of the reasons that make CAR a challenge to cycle through. This is Africa at its rawest. People are desperately poor and survive on a diet of cassava. If The Gambia is Africa for beginners then CAR is definitely on the list of Africa for the experienced. But there are some cycle tourers, such as yours truly, who like the challenging places. Cycling through CAR makes even a warm beer in the evening seem refreshing.

When travel becomes easy, predictable and repetitive it can be boring – CAR is none of these. You might find yourself sampling bush-meat beside a chief’s hut in a small village one evening, then giving an impromptu English lesson to a group of shocked children whose mud-brick school you pitched your tent in the next. At the end of it all you know that you will never ever forget the experience you had travelling through this country. And once you’ve cycled through it, scathed or unscathed, you’ll have the confidence to cycle pretty much anywhere on the continent.

2) Welcome to The Jungle

What remains of dense jungle in West Africa is tame in comparison to what you will experience in the southern part of CAR. This is the tropical and primeval Africa of boyhood imagination, at least mine. It begins in Cameroon and continues through southern CAR into the Congos.

Cycling through that humid tunnel of twisted and tangled overgrowth I used to peer into the enveloping darkness and wonder what other life forms existed in there. Sometimes they came out onto the track, like the enormous centipedes and fierce-looking columns of black ants. Much less threatening were the butterflies – thousands of them surrounded the bike for a few days like confetti in the wind.

And then there were the rivers silently flowing through the forest. They didn’t compare in scale and frequency to what came later in the DRC, but there were many of them – mere tributaries of tributaries to the mighty Congo River, and a tantalising taste of the adventure that was to come.

3) People: The Livingstone experience

The interaction with local people in CAR is like you might expect from a country where most people, particularly children, have never seen a foreigner before. Out in the villages there is no electricity or newspapers. The sight of a white person riding a loaded and unfamiliar looking bicycle naturally draws tremendous curiosity. Stop to say hello and within minutes you will be surrounded by a sea of faces as the inhabitants of an entire village comes to stare at and ask the stranger questions. At times this can be exhausting and intimidating, and for some cyclists who like their solitude it might seem like a complete nightmare. For those who don’t mind the attention and like to imagine what it must have been like for Stanley and Livingstone, (although they were never in this part of Africa) these encounters with the photo-opportunities that often arise, are ones fast disappearing in a World that is so well travelled nowadays.

CAR is one of the few places in Africa where you can still see pygmies living in the forest. These small-statured people are the original inhabitants of central Africa’s forests, living here long before bantu tribes arrived. The Michellin map to Central and east Africa even writes pygmies across the south-western part of the country. Descending into a village one evening it came as a shock to see several pygmy families emerging out of the forest to walk home. They were as shocked at my appearance as I was theres.

4) Village capital: Bangui

Most African capitals are best avoided. Pollution, overcrowding, crime and lack of interesting sites typify the scene. Bangui however has something of a time-warped charm, where the pace of life drifts by like the languid surface of the Ubangui River, the Congo River’s largest tributary that flows beside this one time French-controlled outpost. It’s too small, poor and off-the-beaten track to be polluted or swamped with traffic and street-peddlers.

Of course there’s not much to do here, but if you’re about to cross the river into DRC it offers a last refuge before the jungle commences again.

5) Entry into DRC

A long time ago CAR was used by overland trucks and people, like myself, who wanted to travel across central Africa without flying. The Ubangi river, which runs along the south of the country, separates CAR from the DRC. Once you cross that river you’re into DRC, and 500km away from Africa’s greatest river journey – up the Congo river. There are no large cities like Brazzaville and Kinshasa to worry about. It’s an obvious, if intrepid route choice to cross Central Africa, but all the check-posts you dealt with in CAR will have won you your half-stripes for dealing with the worst of African officialdom. You earn your full stripes in the DRC, and can feel smug that very few other people have come this way before on a bicycle.

There was no shortage of willing oarsmen waiting at the riverbank. This was the end of the road in Tanzania. Ahead lay the Ruvuma River, and beyond that Mozambique. Like many large African rivers it was difficult to see where the far side was. Islands of reeds, tall grasses and tidal sand bars made what was a massive waterway seem less dramatic. Seen from the air it would have been more impressive.

I wasn’t paddled, but reassuringly punted across. Had the small rowing boat capsized I would at least have been able to stand up with head and shoulders above the surface. The thought always goes through my mind when taking a boat in Africa. What would happen if this thing sinks? I imagine trying to tread water holding onto all 50kg of my bike and luggage. I’d end up going down with it. Fortunately it was a peaceful crossing – at least once the fuss over who was going to take me had been settled.

I paid around $5, which was what I had left in Tanzanian shillings. My punter was more ripped than a cover model of Men’s health magazine, but I still held my ground when he and his teenage mate demanded extra. I know I’d paid them more than enough for 30 minutes of their time, although the Slovenian motorcyclist I’d met near Lindi had paid $50, and I’d read of overlanders in 4x4s paying upwards of $250. Well life is always simpler and cheaper on a bicycle.

I spent my first night in Mozambique camping outside the immigration post -something I’ve done at a number of remote African border crossings (Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kenya). There is usually never a problem, but bored immigration officials usually like to drink, and perhaps see some kind of trade-off that if you’re camping on their turf you won’t mind getting the drinks in. Best to yawn early and disappear inside one’s tent.

Now that I’d entered a former Portuguese colony I assumed the Swahili I’d got used to speaking in the previous several months would be of no use. Fortunately not. Being at heart a coastal language, Swahili is probably equally as well understood on the shores of Somalia as it is here in northern Mozambique.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of learning and speaking Swahili is the multitude of words used as a form of greeting, or as a reply to a greeting. Jambo, the first word a tourist might learn in east Africa, is rarely used in Tanzania. It is the informal ‘Mambo Vipi’ (‘how’s it going?’) that one hears commonly on the street. The most popular reply to which is ‘Poa’ (fine)) or any number of other words (nzima, shwari, muzuka, bomba, fresh, safi, kawaida, kabisa – I think that’s most of them?) Young children respectfully greet those older than them with a ‘Shikamou’, to which the reply is Marhaba, and then there is the widespread Islamic ‘Salama Aleikum’ should you wish to please/surprise one of the skull-capped men sitting in the village shade. Well they still apply, to a weaker degree, in northern Mozambique, and so my calling out of ‘Mambo Vipi’ continues to receive replies, albeit less so as I’ve come south.

The roads, for the most part, have been terrible, although that is partly my own choosing. If corrugated roads, as Devla Murphy points out, are the most uncomfortable of surfaces in Africa, sandy roads are definitely the most tiring. Northern Mozambique has plenty of these. Whether cycling on a semi-compact surface or off the bike and pushing it through deep trenches of the stuff, the experience is a draining one. Throw 40 degree+ temperatures and a constant swarm of energetic flies trailing your back and dive bombing your ears into the mix and the experience becomes even less pleasant.

What is it with flies in this part of Africa? They’re worse than anywhere I can remember. Worst of all are the tsetse flies, possibly the most annoying and curse-raging of all Africa’s cornucopia of flying insects. Tsetse flies (horse flies) don’t buzz. They just silently land on you and then bite – sometimes quite painfully. Historically it is the presence of tsetse flies that left many parts of the African bush undeveloped. My black panniers don’t help matters. Apparently tsetse flies prefer dark surfaces. Their presence on the small sandy tracks in the north of Mozambique is a reflection of how undeveloped this part of the country is. I could also say wild, for there was a fair amount of elephant shit to weave around on the tracks, which perhaps explained why some of the brave souls living in huts along the roadside had fortified their small compound with 10ft high poles of wood dug into the ground – the first time I have seen this in Africa. The elephants are probably sensible enough to stay inactive and rest in the shade during the day. I haven’t seen any.

The first town of any significance one reaches coming south from the Tanzanian border is Mocimboa Da Praia, which boasts a non-functioning ATM machine and an Internet connection costing more than $1 for 15 minutes. There are a number of Portuguese-era buildings lining the orderly grid of roads, and socialist-style monuments to the country’s independence. Reasons to stay appeared short and I had a feeling there wasn’t much in the way of budget accommodation, an irony for a place that looked like it should have been brimming with it. I recall Mozambique being more expensive than the rest of southern and east Africa from when I travelled here 10 years ago. I don’t think things have changed. Western prices with African standards is what I read somewhere.

I continued south from Mocimboa on the road my map was labelling as the 247. This was a continuation of the same road that had brought me from the Tanzanian border. I knew it was a dirt track, but the fact it bore a number gave me the impression that it was a ‘designated’ road. Perhaps at one stage in the past it was, but what began as a graded track soon gave way to sand and then a narrow track ending in a mangrove swamp. Fantastic. This was not in the plan.

“You will have to cross two rivers” had said a perplexed teenager in the nearby village of Marare as I sipped sweet tea and dunked it with bread (chapattis alas are no more, but hurrah for the return of good bread!). His mate was beside himself in hysterics when I showed my surprise that there was no bridge or ferry.

The wheel arches of my bike were jammed with soft sticky mangrove mud when I made it to the first river. To begin with it seemed a good idea to wash the mud off, but the water was brackish and I’ve had enough salt getting into the bike as it is in the past few months. As I had been warned there was no bridge, no boat and not a soul around to call for help. Going back would have been a serious detour, so I lay the bike on the sandy riverbank and waded across. If salt water crocodiles exist in Mozambique this looked like a great place for them to hang out.

My first attempt at wading across the river was unsuccessful. I stepped into a deep channel and the water rose above my shoulders. I walked/swam out and pushed the bike upriver to where I could see an emerging sand bank. With the tide on the way out time was in my favour. This time round I made it across(60 metres to the sand bank and a further 15 metres to the far bank) with the river below waist-height most of the way. I transported the bags and bike in 4 journeys, careful not to lose my footing on the muddy riverbed. At high tide this would have been harder, and in the rainy season with a much stronger current I’d have probably detoured and gone back to Mocimboa, where a paved road runs inland and south.

After reassembling the bike and cycling through harvested fields of rice I had to repeat the process again – more mangroves, mud and another river. As far as I could tell there was never a bridge across either of the rivers. Which foolish cartographer/planner had given this road a number? It would be inaccessible to any motorised transport.

I spent the following 2 nights sleeping beneath palm trees on a stunning stretch of coastline. My host Ismail told me the village name was Nfunzi. The plan had been to reach Pangane, some 6km further on, where I remembered reading something about a campsite in a Lonely Planet guidebook. I never made it owing to all that sand again. When I saw the sea up close I stopped. A nearby woman laughed at me struggling. I asked in Swahili if I could sleep where I was and she led me to Ismail’s home.

Like everywhere else in Africa I arrived unannounced. Ismail and his family spoke Kimwani, which is closely related to Swahili. On one side of their palm-thatched shack lay rice fields and on the other the turquoise shallows of the Indian Ocean. Carbohydrates from one source and protein from another. Life couldn’t have been simpler.

My surroundings were unexpectedly replaced with a dose of luxury when I continued south on yet another sandy track. “We’ve just come from Guludu Beach Lodge. You should go and say hi. There are some English people working there”. The news came through the window of a 4×4 transporting 4 white faces. They’d passed me several days earlier on a similarly terrible stretch of road and probably thought it time to stop and greet the crazy cyclist.

I duly headed towards Guludu Beach Lodge and met another white face driving towards me in a land rover. “Just going to collect some sand. I’m Harry by the way”. I thought this was a joke on my behalf. Why anyone in this part of Mozambique would need to go anywhere to collect sand I’m not sure. “Isn’t it everywhere”? I suggested. “There’s a particularly sandy stretch up ahead. Go and meet my girlfriend and I’ll be back shortly”.

Down at the beach I met 4 other young foreigners working at Guludu Beach Lodge – a simple, eco-friendly, beautiful and way-out-of-my-budget resort. There are lots of places like this in Africa, but Mozambique seems to specialise in luxury resorts – the type that appear in the Sunday Times travel section where you can experience the beauty of Africa and the Indian Ocean for the bargain price of something like £2500 for 10 days, excluding flights. It is another World from life on the road.

The plan had just been to say hi and possibly get some information about the road ahead, but a very generous discount on a room had me content to pretend that I too could have booked my holiday through the Sunday Times. I’m not sure when the last time was that I slept on a bed with a proper mattress.

Harry and his girlfriend Caitlin had found jobs at Guludu through a website called escapethecity.com, and their surroundings were definitely a change of scenery from sitting at an office desk from 9-5.

I would have stayed a second night had the local employees not told me that if I wanted to reach Quissanga and the road south to Pemba then I would have to take a boat leaving very early in the morning. There definitely was no road ahead, despite my map depicting one.

And so the Guludu team waved me off the next afternoon before I rejoined the sand track for another 15km, bringing me to the village of Darumba/Mipange. Here the road really did end. I pitched the tent in a school teacher’s compound and set my alarm for 3.45am the next morning on learning that a boat would sail to Quissanga starting after 4am. Sure enough it did, with surprisingly few passengers – a peaceful journey between the mainland and the Quirimba islands.

The following day I rolled into Pemba, where I sit now in a campsite/lodge I first came to 10 years ago. It’s a lot busier than I remember it to be. Down the road there is some American-financed mission with hundreds of young missionary volunteers. A group of them were having a discussion last night about whether there is a sushi restaurant in Mozambique. Apparently Maputo has one. I haven’t spoken to any of them. It would be interesting to hear what their impressions are of Mozambique and Africa. My tent resides under a cashew tree away from the bar and my stove for the first time in many months is getting frequent use again. In Tanzania or Kenya I could just pop out onto the street to find cheap eats. Not here it seems.

For the first time in weeks my bike is now free of sand and salt. It’s tempting to finally use the paved road to take me further south, but I seem to be drawn to small roads that end at bridgeless rivers. There is another one between here and Nacala.