Mozambique - Part 6

There’d been a lengthy lull in conversation, but the instant I looked down at my open guidebook, 40-something Juan, the Director of Customs for the province of Manica, asked me yet another question about my family. As I began to explain when, and to whom, my younger sister got married, I glanced out the pick-up truck’s back window. Liam caught my eye and threw me a windswept wink.

Our hitchhike back to Beira went much faster than the journey there (the saved time mostly due to a lack of pointless 1 ½ hour stops). So I had to converse non-stop with our chatty kathy driver while Liam and Gavin lounged in the sunny, breezy truck bed? It was worth it! We knocked almost 6 hours off of our previous time traversing the EN1, and, in the end, when Liam asked if he could pitch in for gas, Juan looked at him, smiled and said, “I suspect not”, before driving away. Pretty good lift.

That morning, we’d awoken before dawn in Vilankulo, a bustling, dirty, little one-horse town in southern Mozambique. Glacier melt water coursed from the tap, disappointingly precluding a shower, so we simply packed up and jumped into the back of a crowded pick-up truck taxi, which brought us 12 miles to the EN1, Mozambique’s major North-South highway. In Pambara, more of a truck stop than a town, a grandmotherly woman kindly poured me some hot “agua” for tea, and we waited, watching a few little kids play a sand-throwy game of soccer. That was when Juan drove by, picked us up and sped the three of us northward.

Once in Inchope, the intersection village 3 hours west of Beira, I bought delicious muffins from a middle-aged woman who plainly thought the idea of selling my foreign self her wares was a hilarious, knee slapper of an event and would, without a doubt, spend the next few weeks telling friends and family, “Well, you’ll never guess what happened to me the other day…”

Liam, Gavin and I rode a maddening, stop-go-stop-go-stop-go-stop-go-stop-go minibus into Beira, which took forever. It was dark by the time we arrived and, at my pleading suggestion, we went out for a dinner of fresh prawns (the best I’d ever eaten) before heading back to the pleasantly familiar, Biques campground, setting up shop, and going to bed.

Day 6 Budget

$0.54 minibus

$1.25 toothbrush

$0.89 biscuits

$0.96 water

$0.54 mini-muffins and 2 hard-boiled eggs

$3.57 minibus

$4.29 yummy prawn dinner

$0.89 Mozambique’s famous custard dessert

$0.21 bananas

$1.07 taxi

$3.04 camping

Total $17.25