Riding day 8 Vilankulos to Chimoio After trying to get as much information as possible about the armoured column we left early for the Save River to Mexungue leg .
The backpackers had told us there was 2 per day , one early and one in the afternoon , we were under the impression that this meant 2 heading north per day so we woke up early and tried to reach the Save river bridge by 9am when we thought the convoy was leaving . After Vilankulos the road starts to get bad with giant potholes appearing on the road .
We were making good time when Stephan hit a pothhole with only 10km to go to reach the start of the convoy -
Try as we could there was no way we would make the time we thought the first convoy would leave , not 5km further and the tyre was down again forcing us to slow everything down and accept that we would not make it
We reached Save just after 9am only to find out some facts about the convoys - yes there is two convoys per day but only one each way - the Save convoy going north leaves at 1pm heading north , it was the south bound one that leaves early in the morning .
Save bridge town was a weird place , on the edge of the new civil war there was a nervous energy about the place , trucks and buses were arriving all the time to get ready for the afternoon convoy , photography was not allowed and there was a huge police/military presence .
a view towards Save bridge
some of the interesting buses that were starting to arrive to wait on the convoy - good packing hey
At 1pm we crossed the bridge only to be assembled by the police about a km after the bridge in some sort of convoy , and there we waited ......
Eventually at 3pm we left for Mexungue - it was chaos led by a Russian APC - the road on this stretch had degenerated into a pothole filled obstacle course with burnt vehicles lining the side of the road every now and then - I counted 23 burnt vehicles on this 100km stretch of road , the Mozambican government is trying to keep this stretch out of the press and trying to get a photo was very difficult
We arrived in Mexungue at sunset and the town was wild with drunken people in the streets and trucks flying through the town pushing for Inchope were they would spend the night waiting on the next leg north . My GPS did not indicate a place to stay in the town and asking around just put us in the limelight of the drinking chaos which was getting a bit heated so we decided to push on .
Riding at night in Africa is bad , added to this was a pothole filled road with trucks heading north as fast as possible without a care for road conditions made this stretch of road a living nightmare .
Somewhere along the road while overtaking a truck I hit a huge pothole - the results were disastrous
-- both front and back wheels badly damaged , I was lucky to stay upright ..
We made Chimoio by 10pm exhausted from the concentration and me worried about my wheels and thinking that if I couldn't find somewhere to fix my rims my journey would be over .
Topic: Off to see the wizard - Mozambique , Malawi , Zambia and Zimbabwe (Read 19053 times)