Day 318 / 83

Date: 24 February 2023
Sleeping location: Woodland 21.1106S 30.7486E, Zimbabwe

Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 140 / 19568 / 4731
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 600 / 170500 / 52500
Road: variable 
Day in three words: Desperately Fleeing Freddy 

The kitchen at the hostel was confusing, and I attempted to boil water on the knackered old hob before one of the staff members saw and brought me an electric kettle. I don’t know where or why this was being hidden away in the first place. I packed up and got away by 9ish, saying goodbye to Oliver and Pauline who are heading towards Chimanimani. They were good fun and I hope to go to Belgium and see them (and Sarah) for some delicious beers once we are all back in Europe. 

Outside town the road went back into empty savannah and became fairly quiet aside from the occasional truck*, which was good because the road was pretty crap and narrow. It was a pleasant temperature with a very light headwind, and with the road heading slightly downhill fairly I made good progress. The morning’s intel suggested that Freddy was going to cross my path tomorrow, starting in the early afternoon, so my plan was to cycle 210km to a well-regarded motel before then and hunker down until everything calmed down again. This plan therefore required a big day today in order to allow a smaller day tomorrow. I kept rolling and only stopped every couple of hours, in the infrequent villages, to pick up cold fizzy drinks and munch down snacks/lunch. The villages generally had the classic Zimbabwean harmless drunk man taking an interest in me - my favourite of these was a very excitable guy with a very high pitched voice who was swigging on a big beer (at 11am) and reacted to everything I said with wide-eyed astonishment.

In the afternoon the landscape got a bit more interesting, with a series of huge rocks, and the road got really good, new and smooth with a big wide shoulder. There was a headwind but it was still very light, so progress was boring yet relaxing. The most interesting thing along here was a series of women selling fish who signalled this to passing cars by holding up cardboard fish shapes on a stick. I stopped in a village mid afternoon and was very confused to find that things were now priced in rands. Here a woman called Christine sold me some drinks and gave me some water for camping, then took my number and texted me repeatedly for the following 36hrs. The road then went back to being rubbish and went past a series of quarries, which displayed their “blasting times” on a handwritten sign outside. I am not sure if this is to encourage people to stay away or come and spectate. 

Good internet was scarce but late afternoon I finally found some and checked on Freddy again, and there was big news. He had decided to slow down and swerve a little to the right, which meant that if I could keep going south at pace I should be able to miss the worst of him entirely. I opted to “go big” and hit 140km just before sunset, before stopping to look for a camp spot. This was easy - I doubled back along a half built new road and quickly found a sort of track that was clearly not used any more. A couple of pushes through bushes and I had myself a nice little clearing amongst the low trees, with no people about and no mosquitoes or insects. I was still near enough to the road to get the noise of the trucks bumping along but they quietened down in the night. For dinner I made a super basic pasta with a packet of mushroom soup, jazzed it up considerably by dropping an entire block of cheese in there, then got an early night ahead of an early start tomorrow. A big day beckons. 

*One of the truck companies is called Tortoise Transport, which is either terrible branding or a company which exclusively carries around shelled reptiles