Day 298 / 63

Date: 4 February 2023
Sleeping location: Pensão Beny, Moatize, Mozambique
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 122 / 18412 / 3575
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 700 / 157600 / 39600
1500: not 1200
Day in three words: Bye bye Malawi

On the way up to the border (borders are always at the top or bottom of big hills, which makes sense geographically I guess) I stopped to buy some bread and bananas and was given, without having to extract it grudgingly, a fair price by some nice smiling people. Straight after this I got waves from some grinning guys on snack-loaded bikes. When Malawi is good it’s really good, it’s just a shame that it’s often such hard work. Like Ethiopia, I really liked a lot of it - the landscape is beautiful, there are lots of nice places to stay and eat, and when Malawians are being genuinely friendly they are very nice - but overall the people made the experience materially worse. The constant attempts to extract money, by fair means or foul or just straight up demanding it,* the fake friendliness to reel you in, all of this slowly eroded my trust and openness until there was very little left. I get that they’re poor and I’m rich, but I’m a human not a dollar sign. The Malawi tourism board calls it “the warm heart of Africa”; I would suggest “the warm heart of avarice” fits better.** 

I stamped out of Malawi, changed my leftover Kwacha into Mozambique Meticals at a bad but not egregious rate and headed across about 5km of no-mans land where apparently a lot of mans were living anyway. It was pretty though, with small rocky peaks rising all around. Along here was the final Malawian grift, or maybe the first Mozambican one, one of those fake roadblocks with some heaped dirt and branches where they demand money to let you through. I went left and then swerved right through a gap when they tried to move the branches to block my left, pretended I didn’t understand, said “thank you!” cheerfully, ignored the shouts of “give money” and waved as I went on my way. It’s just mugging without the explicit threat of violence and they can get fucked. 

At the Moz*** side I presented my e-visa on my phone and was told I needed to print it, along with my covid vaccination status and hotel booking. Thankfully I had already been able to pick up a Moz SIM card and there was a shop nearby where I could print, which had a "World's Worst Dictators" poster including, gloriously, Margaret Thatcher in the top row, above such superstars as Hitler and Pol Pot. As apparent compensation for this printing faff I was only charged $50 rather than the $100 it had said online. I’m not sure they’ve quite sorted this system yet. The whole experience including the ride through no man’s land took two hours, significantly less than I’d time-budgeted, and I was clear by 11. I decided to try and get to Moatize, 105km down the road and the first settlement of note, by sundown so I could get some food and beers and watch the England v Scotland rugby game on my phone.

 

Initially Moz seemed the same as Malawi but Portuguese. Vibes were generally good, lots of bright colours, the odd wave and thumbs up, and one guy went absolutely bananas when he saw me, I assume/hope in joy. I ding my bell every time I reach another 100km (ten times for every 1,000) and happened to do this near a few guys on bikes, who responded with a chorus of their own bells and waves. There were occasional checkpoints but the police here were friendly too. One guy at the side of the road was the spit of Kanye West, so that’s the second formerly-cool-but-now-disgraced-after-lurching-to-the-far-right musician I’ve seen on this trip (after Morrissey riding a tractor in Macedonia). The road gradually descended from 900m at the border down to 400m and became the stereotypical African landscape of hot, open, empty savannah. No giraffes though. The combination of shade and Maggie-leaning spots was hard to find and usually only available in the few little villages along the way. Thankfully cheap and icy-cold drinks were available in these villages and I gulped down a few each time I stopped. I took lunch under a big tree and a shy kid came to investigate in secret by climbing the tree behind Maggie. He was cute so I gave him a banana. 

I got to Moatize with daylight to spare and I checked out the first hotel I saw, where I was greeted by a friendly guy. He showed me a room which seemed fine and had AC, vital as it was very hot down here. He initially said it was 1,500 (£20), then said he could do 1,200, cheap by Mozambique hotel prices (which seem to be much, much higher than in the last few countries), so I went to get some more cash out and bought a pineapple. After a much-needed shower I went out for some peri-peri chicken and chips at a weirdly empty restaurant, but it was tasty and big cold session-strength beers were 65p each. Quenching. It was nice being able to rock out my Spanish, even if most of the time people probably didn't understand it.

Annoyingly the guy at the border had given me a stupid data package where I got loads of data for whatsapp and facebook but not much for anything else, and I burned through that before the 20th minute of the rugby and missed the rest. Then back at the hotel I tried to pay and was told that actually no, it’s 1500 now. I refused and the owner was summoned, and we had a small argument using his bad English, my bad Spanish and google translate. In the end he gave up and went away in a huff, like I was the dick here, which I don’t think I was, although three beers had made me a bit more confrontational than I might otherwise have been. 

(The Final) Malawian Signs Corner 

New Baghdad Club

Big Joe [Unknown establishment]

My Top 3 Favourite Malawian Signs

3. Power Mind Electronics

2. Hash Tag Emu One bar 

1. To Know Me Is To Love Me Rasta Shop 

*Of course, I was navigating this using my own moral compass. It’s entirely possible that in Malawi it’s totally fine to rip someone off if they’re white.

**Alternatively, “grifting with a smile”

***I’m too lazy to keep typing Mozambique