Chimoio-Zomba Night Driving on dirt roads

"Guten Morgen! Said Anja, as we woke up too late. Are you going to go to Blantyre today? You are late. Most people that go to Blantyre leave at 6 in the morning." It was 7.30 at that time. We still had to go to a bank, get some breakfast and so on. So we left hurriedly for the bank, only to find a queue already. Such a shame, at 6 there would have been none. We left Chimoio eventually at 8.30am. Anja had said the road would be potholed, 5-6 hours of driving to Tete.

Scenry changed quite a bit. We had mountains all around now, although the road remained relatively flat. These are, apart from the photo above, gentle elevations, so driving was smooth actually, up to Changara at least, which was some 250 Kms.

We did do some sanitary stops ;-), and I bought some bread in a town along the way, 20 MTN for 4 pieces is great value. And we went. I took on the occasional hitchhiker like I always do when I have room to spare, but it didn't make for great conversation.

 And then came the potholes! Quite severe, but fortunately only for a short distance. I had to keep aware though, every few kms there would be another episode of really big ones, almost always accompanied by Mozambican children who were putting sand in the holes and asking to be "paid" for that.

Eventually we came to a new stretch of road, which ment deviations as well, because construction was not finished yet. The rest of the road was wonderfully flat, though.

I then took the kids with me in the front, you can see they got tired from the long drive to Tete.

 We crossed the Zambezi at 13.00, which meant the drive had not been so bad at all! Just over 4 hours for a 375 Km stretch is quite good. As my Maputo host remarked: "You must have been driving like a local". So what to do now? Stay in Tete? Anja had not recommended it, because all accomodation is expensive there. It's a boomtown because of the mining activities. And indeed there were a lot of foreigners there, in the shops, in their big 4x4s, in the hotels. We decided to drive on, even though I suspected we might not arrive before dark.

Near to the border, could that be Malawi already? This stretch of road is badly potholed as well. We made the border at a little after four, which meant I had done no more than 60 kms/hr on average from Tete... We could be in for a long drive to Blantyre and Zomba, I thought. Especially as all the formalities at the border did not only take 35000 Kwacha (70 EUR, mainly to pay for the people helping, but including TIP for 5000 and insurance for 20000) but it took 90 minutes as well. We entered Malawi at 5.45 pm.

This looks horrible, but it is only a short stretch in Blantyre, actually. It's the bypass for heavy traffic towards Zomba. I got personal guidance over the phone by Frank, a guest of Packachere's, otherwise I would not have found (nor trusted) this road! Otherwise, the road from the border to Blantyre was a blast! I could do 130 here in hte dark (following other cars, I must admit) so we reached Blantyre a little after seven. Nightdriving then continued to Zomba, where a new road is being constructed. This means a lot of deviations like the one above, but in the dark this time. Which I did not mind, because in the end my wife would be waiting!

And so she did! We arrived at nine, did some cava and beers and went to bed ;-)