Hi everyone and thanks for still following my posts, that's awesome. We made it across the border to Mozambique today and are now in Maputo which is an amazing city. But more about Maputo later. Internet time is limited so let me just quickly answer some questions and then it's time for another report...
@Turbocharger: it is true, the Australia leg went past quite quickly but since Australia is my home I did not plan to spend all to much time there. Saved most of my time for Africa.

The bikeshop which helped me in Perth is called X-treme motorbikes, they are easy to find on Google.

The Cargo Terminal in Johannesburg Airport is only about 1km from the passenger terminal. If you ask anyone at the airport information desk, they will point you towards it. It is really quite simple. There is also a petrol station next to the airport, 10min walking distance. In case you need to empty the tank for the flight.

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no risk - no fun

Days 7 and 8 - Swaziland
Our trip got just a little bit more exotic when we left the well developed South Africa and crossed the border into Swaziland near Bulembu. The border crossing was easy and straight forward, no more than 10min at the South African exit point and also no more than 10min to enter Swaziland. The difference in the road quality though was massive. On the South African side we rode on perfect tarmac all the way to the border. Once past the border the road changed to a narrow strip of steep dusty gravel road with lots of potholes and corrugations. The sort of road requiring 1st or 2nd gear max. However, the sealed surface started at the first town again, a town with the beautiful name of Piggs Peak.
Swaziland is close to South Africa in various ways. Many of the South African brand logos for banks, supermarkets etc. can be found here. The currency is at a fixed exchange rate of 1:1 to the South African Rand and in fact the Rand can be used to pay for things just as easily as the Swazi Emalangeni (beautiful name for money, isn't it?). There are some significant differences between the two countries though which move Swaziland more into the corner of the typical african stereotype country. In Swaziland life seems to take place on the road. There are so many people on the road just everywhere, in towns and in between towns. Kids play on the road, people stand on the road chatting. And it's not just people, it's also their lifestock. On a beautiful winding passroad we once came across a whole herd of cattle just standing on the road in one of the tight corners typical for mountain passes. It's quite a shocking surprise to find them there when zooming around the corner, enjoying the view down into the valley and suddenly you have to hit the brakes and stop just a meter away from a very happy and unsurprised cow. Which then slowly starts to move out of the way.
Lonely planet says that in Swaziland almost all people are Swazi. And sure enough we did hardly see any white people here. Even in the capital Mbabane we encountered the same as elsewhere. Lots and lots of people on the streets, no white people around. It somehow feels more like the 'true' Africa if compared to it's big neighbour.
Lonely Planet also says that Swazilands biggest problem is HIV, a staggering 39% of people between 15 and 49 years of age are infected which results in an average life expectancy of just 33 years. Being here in the country this is quite hard to believe. Swaziland does not appear to be a poor country. In contrary, you don't see any shabby townships, you see a lot of good modern western made cars, people appear to be happy, everything is very clean. But we too did notice that there are only young people around. An average life expectancy of 33 years seems to be true. But it is still a scary thought that I am already beyond that age.
Another interesting observation we made is the layout of the settlements. Apart from a few towns the map of Swaziland is pretty empty. However, in reality there are scattered square brick houses everywhere. You cannot determine which town they belong to but there's always houses, people, livestock, general stores, 'supermarkets' the size of a cornershop and handicraft stalls. It makes it pretty hard to find a quiet camping spot. We tried very hard and rode many km on bone shattering dirt roads to find one on our first night here. But no success. So we ended up camping near the geographical centre of the country in a field some 100m off a dirtroad. It took no more than 15min until we had a group of visitors. A very friendly bunch of people just as everyone else here, just checking out what we were doing. We learned that we were supposed to report to a 'chief' before setting up camp. A short mobile phone call from our guests to the 'assistant chief' quickly sorted out that we were welcome to stay where we were for one night. They just wanted to make sure we were not up to something evil or how they expressed it, we were not 'Gaddafies relatives'. Well, we obviously looked nothing like the Colonel, sitting in the grass and cooking our cheap roibos tea.
In terms of riding we did some beautiful passroads through Swaziland as well as some pretty rough dirt roads. Dirt roads of the kind with many rocks sticking out and corrugations to shake the poor bike to pieces. Which was another good training session for me. And I must say my confidence level of riding my little Suzuki has steeply risen. However, we have not encountered the two things that scare me most yet: sand and mud. So I guess we're still doing it easy here.

In Swaziland we also came in contact with the Police for the first time in this journey. It was pretty funny actually. We had in incredibly hot day. And when I say hot I mean this sort of hot when you start sweating even before sunrise. And for the rest of the day you're just boiling in your sweat. Usually I am wearing my motorbike jacket when riding but today I was just melting inside and just rode along with my T-shirt. Martin went one step further and rode topless. Before I am grilled about our attitude to safety here, I must say it was really really hot and the road quality made us ride really slowly and our bike jackets would have exhausted us in this heat to an extent that it would not actually have improved our safety. We needed full focus for this dirt road. Funny thing is that Police thought differently and fined Martin 60 Rand (=AU$ 8.50) for failing to wear protective gear which apparently is compulsory in Swaziland. I was not fined because a T-shirt is considered sufficiently protective. Makes total sense, doesn't it?
Much more exciting however was our visit to the Hlane Royal NP near the border to Mocambique. Usually National Parks where you can see any member of the 'Big 5' (elephant, lion, rhino, buffalo and leopard) will not let you in on motorbikes. At least in the touristy countries like South Africa, Botswana or Kenya. However, the Lonely Planet said about the Hlane Royal NP that even mountain bike tours are on offer. So no worries on motorbikes then. We thought. We thought wrong. They didn't let us in. Because the elephants would be too aggressive.
But we still had a Plan B up our sleeves. Leaving our bikes behind at the boom gates and asking drivers of the cars behind us if they would have room for two dusty smelly bikies to tag along for a self drive trip through the park. And amazingly success came with the first car - two Dutch girls in a tiny Chevrolet rental car, one of those small ones the size of a Toyota Yaris. But for the chance to see some big animals Martin and me, we were more than happy to squeeze into the back seat and the girls were happy to take us along.
And what an amazing little trip that was. There were rhinos so massive they seemed to be bigger than our car. Twice we surprised them sleeping on the road, just a huge mountain of muscles and fat blocking our path and shocking us just as much as we surprised them for none of us expected to come that close to each other. And there were elephants and various species of antelopes - all just metres away from our tiny car. And no fences or cages around them. It was just unreal and if we didn't feel 100% like it yet, than this park sure made us feel like we are in Africa. It is a weird sensation to be there, so close to those animals. It's a bloody hot day, the midday sun is burning your skin, the sky is blue but there is still this haze of dust and grass fires in the air, crickets and strange birds are the only sounds you here and there, just meters away is this massive rhino. Only moving in tiny slow bits every few minutes or so. Watching this scenery is so relaxing and exciting at the same time, I could have watched forever. And good thing is we DID have time to watch forever. And it was the rhinos who eventually left.
We are now camping just a few km away from the border to Mocambique which we will cross tomorrow. According to our information we get our visa at the border. But our two Dutch friends meant we need to organise it in advance at the embassy in Mbabane. So we give it a try tomorrow morning and hope it works out and saves us going back the 150km to Mbabane. Cross fingers for us!

We also chose a great spot for our 2nd night camping in Swaziland, again by sheer coincidence. It was a very quite spot when we got there, just near a railway line and next to some abandoned houses, a few hundred meters off a small road. Once it got dark there was suddenly this loud african music. It sounded like it's coming from right next door to us. So we had a quick look back to the road to where the music came from. And sure as hell - the only building up there was a pub. Small and cosy and only three patrons inside. But african style music playing from the jukebox. And believe me, after this scorcher of a day an icecold Windhoek Lager in a big 750ml bottle never tasted better.
What a great last night in friendly Swaziland.

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no risk - no fun

Okay, it's time for some pics again. Hope the upload works. These are some snapshots of our visit to Swaziland.


One of the many passroads we took through Swaziland


Moonlight illuminating our camping spot


Swazi kid posing with my helmet


Sunrise at our camping spot where a phone call to the 'assistant chief' the night before secured us a place to sleep



Typical gravel road through Swaziland. A bit rocky and dusty in places but generally good quality.


Beware of lions and elephants on the road! Near Hlane Royal NP.


We saw a lot of rhinos very close in the Hlave Royal NP. I did not recall them being that big but they are just huge.


Impalas can be seen in great numbers in the National Park


This rhino just slept on the road with it's baby. So we had to reverse our way out of there.


Also this elephant did not seen to be bothered by our presence and calmly ate a few dry branches of a tree just meters away from our car.

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no risk - no fun

Day 9
Hello again everyone. As promised here comes a quick update from Mozambique. Our first day's highlights of entering the country and staying in Maputo.
We got up early at our camp near the old railway line in Swaziland to get to the border quickly. Things we heard about Mozambique made it clear to us that we should reserve some time for the border crossing. From where we were there was a choice of two crossing points, we decided for the crossing at Goba. Goba is a small and relatively new crossing and therefore it is not too busy. And to get there we could ride through another small game reserve on the Swaziland side, enjoying another dirt road instead of the tiring tarmac on the main highway. However, 'game' did not seem to be aware that the place was a game reserve and apart from three warthogs no animals showed up. Probably had to do with our noisy bikes too.
The border crossing was as usual split in two parts. The Swaziland exit was very easy, just showing the passport and receiving an exit stamp. Outside we had to 'proof our ownership of our vehicles' which the Certificate of Registration did sufficiently and after a short chat about motorbikes the boomgate opened for us. It all took maybe 15 minutes.
Part two was the entry into Mozambique. We did not have a visa at that point because we knew it is available at the border. What we did not know was that at the border it would cost three times the fee than at the Mozambique embassy in Mbabane. We now had to pay 600 South African Rand (AU$85) for it instead of 200 as the other travellers did in Mbabane. So if you ever follow us to Mozambique, make sure you get your visa beforehand!
Apart from that the entry procedure was very easy and relatively quick. The Carnet for our bikes was not needed and instead we got a Temporary Import Permit for another 10 Rand fee and the boomgates opened for us again. This side of the border kept us busy for around one hour.
And before we knew we were riding through Mozambique on a beautiful sunny day.
First thing we noticed in Mozambique - there is no more English. Local language here is Portuguese. Which is one of my favourite languages. Not that any of us speaks any of it, but it sounds awesome, it sounds like sunshine, summer, party. Since my holiday in Brazil in 2008 I'm loving it. It is definitely on the to do list to learn Portuguese.
Second thing we noticed - the landscape is really green here, a welcome change to the dry brownish environment we got used to in Swaziland.
And third thing we noticed - Mozambique is incredibly colourful. We rode through a place called Boane and stopped to get some money out of an ATM. And the whole town was buzzing in all colours of the rainbow. There were lots of stalls where colourful fruits were sold. People everywhere wearing at least three colours per person. Colourful billboards covered the walls of the buildings. And there was music, chatter, cars honking. People here are not just a colourful bunch but also a happy one. Kids playing soccer whereever there was a few square metres of space, and most people's faces were lightened up by their white teeth because they were constantly smiling. People shook hands with us and greeted us without hasseling. Everyone seems to live on happy pills.
And coming into Maputo this impression even intensified. Maputo is a buzzing hub of over a million smiling faces. Riding into Maputo we were overtaken by minibus taxis overcrowded with smiles. There were small little red Honda motorbikes. No rider wearing a helmet. And there were the TukTuk style taxis zooming past us and running the red lights.
Also the roadblocks that many people warned us about were a no-show. We passed two Police checks, on both of them they were not the least bit interested in us. In almost an entire day in Maputo not even one bribe was asked of us. The traffic here seems to be chaotic when seen from the outside but once you are part of it, it all seems to make sense and it becomes easy to navigate. Like in a big river you just go with the flow and it is this flow which automatically guides you around stopping minibus taxis, potholes or broken down trucks. Whith no worries in the world and big smiles on our own faces we arrived at a nice little hostel where they allowed us to camp and bring our bikes in. From there we spent the rest of the day walking and exploring the city. And enjoing the famous 2M .
After travelling inland since my arrival in Africa it was also good to see the ocean again. And it is this ocean that we plan to follow north. Our (expensive) visa grants us 30 days in the country so we have all the time in the world. The latest iteration of our plan for the future is to travel north as far as 'Ilha de Mocambique' and then head west and cross into Malawi and Zambia. See what happens.

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no risk - no fun

Here we go with some snapshots of our first day in Mozambique, mostly spent in Maputo.



'Welcome to Mozambique' just across the border from Swaziland near Goba



Boane is the first town on the road to Maputo. It is a colourful and lively intro into Mozambique



An arts and handycrafts market in Maputo



Maputo



Maputo



Maputo



Maputo - back at the Indian Ocean. Just across there would be Australia. Long way across...

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no risk - no fun

I enjoy your trip......Keep up Marco!!!

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3mountainsadventure

Hi Marco,
I am not sure if you mentioned this before, but what type of maps are you using? Paper maps or gps? Tracks4Africa or something else?
Thanks for all the important information you are sharing!

We are using mainly the electronic version of the Tracks4Africa maps on Martin's Garmin GPS. But we also have paper maps, the usual Michelin ones which are not too detailed. And Martin brought along a few papermaps from Germany, published by 'Reise Knowhow' which are really good and detailed.

__________________
no risk - no fun

thanks for taking the time to keep us abreast of your adventure! safe traveling, H

Hey Marco,


Mate im real sorry I didnt get to say goodbye to you at work before you left, and i cant believe it has taken me this long to write you a comment.

Im loving the story so far, keep up the good work with the blog.

This trip looks amazing and is making me very jealous.

Stay safe and have fun.

Scott B :-)

p.s I hope you know who this is.

Hi Marco,

Hopefully I have worked out how to use this site. Am loving your detailed and informative writings. Sounds like you are having a fabulous time.

Tuesdays are just not the same - your replacement just isn't up to your standard. Miss you, take care and keep living the dream
J xxx

Hello everyone and thanks for your replies. It feels good to stay connected. Even if connection is not easy to maintain if internet is so rarely to be found. However, we are in Bulawayo in Zimbabwe at the moment and although there is an internet cafe the slow computer won't let me upload any pics. So it's just text for now. As usual the accumulated diary entries for the last days (and weeks)...

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no risk - no fun

Day 12 - Inhambane, Mozambique
Hello again with another short update from Mozambique. Short because there is actually not too much happening to write a lot about. The highlight of the last couple of days was to simply be here. Just cruising along. Here in Mozabique. Which is a great place to cruise along.
If you hear stories about what a dangerous place Mozambique would be, how corrupt the police is or how many bribes you would be expected to pay - simply forget about it. We haven't met anyone meaning us bad yet, nor have we met corrupt officials or police. The very contrary is true. People are super friendly here and help us in all respects. E.g. lifting the bike that has been dropped on a sandy path (but let's talk about that later). There is a police checkpoint in every small town. But it is merely a speed check with surprisingly sophisticated looking radar cameras. We try to stick to the speed limit and are usually just waved through with a friendly smile. No Police has stopped us yet.
Mozambique is a pretty easy place to get your bearings right. There is pretty much only one sealed road going all the way in North - South direction more or less parallel to the coast for around 2500km. In the centre part, where Mozambique is a bit wider there are a few gravel roads to connect to Lake Malawi or the Zimbabwe border. But that's pretty much it. All along this main road there are little market stalls selling things like mobile prepaid vouchers, Coca Cola, fire wood, bundles of straw or some produce such as oranges, cashew nuts or paw paws. Almost every village also has a bakery. We just live of 'Pao typico Portuguese' which is a piece of bread not unlike the French baguette in shape and lenghts but of rather white ciabatta like dough. One of those only costs about 8 Meticais (AU$ 0.30) and it really fills you up for a while and tastes great. There is also petrol stations every 100 or so km, making fuel a non issue along that road. Even in between those fuel is sold in 5 litre water bottles from little stalls next to the road. One litre of unleaded (unknown octane) costs just under 50 Meticais (AU$ 1.65) and is relatively expensive compared to the other costs in Mozambique. But it must be good fuel because my little Suzuki achieves an unprecedented fuel economy of under 5l/100km with it.

Maybe let's just talk about some random examples of our experience with the Mozambique people. Just to give you an idea what to expect if you ever find yourself here.
One evening we were looking for a good place to camp and just went into some tiny dirtpath which looked promising. And indeed some hundred meters in we found the perfect pitch of grass. Clearly within sight of it there was a group of people cooking on a fire and some little kids running around. So there I went to introduce us and ask if it's okay for us to camp on that piece of grass. It ended up being one such situation where I tried to start a conversation with the three words of Portuguese I know and get two village mums replying back simultaneously in rapid downpours of Portuguese while stirring the stuff in the big pot on the fire. Me not knowing the words for 'camping' or 'tent' or 'sleeping' certainly did not help. So we ended up wildy weaving our hands and arms and pointing towards things and drawing picures in the sand and shaking our heads. And laughing our ass off. And with kids running around me and two village mums laughing at me I felt like entertaining the whole village and we all had some good fun. Until I thought I got the message across and became a thumps up and 'tudo bom' ('all good') in response.
A few hours later we were visited by a big group of people. Including one young guy who spoke English. The purpose of their visit was to 'greet us', one of the village mums still had a lot of fun now that we actually had a translator between us. And we were presented with a thick piece of sugar cane to break up pieces and chew them and suck the sweet sugar juice out of it. As a welcome present to their village.
Another evening we were looking for camping again and found a road leading to the beach. The road started good enough as a dirt road with some sandy patches. However, the sandy bits grew longer and longer. And deeper too. And after I dropped my poor bike on a similar road earlier the same day it was now Martin's turn. On a particularly deep sandy uphill section he found his poor Africa Twin suddenly on her side. And within seconds people came along to help lifting the heavily laden Honda back up. Also within seconds we had status updates about the rest of the road. And friendly company again the next morning after camping on the beach when the same guys came along for some spear fishing and said hello.
Or today when it was realy hot and we used our poor bikes as an excuse to stop to give them a rest. We went straight to the pub (=container with drinks being sold). Sitting there, two ladies approached us selling cashew nuts. Hungry as we were we asked how much those would be and encountered our usual communication difficulties. Our three words of broken Portuguese against their simultaneous whole barrage of talking. After a few seconds they showed one hand and counted their fingers so we assumed the whole bag of nuts would be costing us 5 Meticais (AU$ 0.17). So I got out my 5Mtk coin wondering why it was so cheap and these two ladies started laughing and didn't stop. What they found so funny I still don't get. But they obviously asked for 50Mtk for their bags of cashews. Which is still cheap. In between those intense episodes of laughter we went tbrough all the coins I had. They picked 43Mtk (AU$1.50) worth of coins, left us with 2(?) sizeable bags of cashews and off they went still giggling and laughing.
It's a really good bunch of people to be around, these Mozambiquans.

On the bike side of things: both our bikes are holding up really well. Most of our km are done on the paved main artery road but it's the little bits and pieces of when we leave that road which make the trip interesting. Obviously our tyre choices (Pirelli Scorpion MT90 A/T for my bike and Mitas E07 for Martin's Honda) are not great in sand but which tyres would be? They are easy to ride on gravel roads though and also on the tarmac. Although the hot and rough tarmac here eats away the rubber quit rapidly. So I guess before we go into the DRC we might need to find a new set of tyres in Dar es Salam and hope our 21" and 17" sizes will be available. There should be tyres available in Dar, right?
In terms of DRC we might be lucky with the visa situation. Our hostel in Maputo was just down the road from the DRC High Commision so we thought we go in and ask some questions. And the lady there was really cool and helpful but couldn't give us a visa. Because we are not residents of Mozambique and embassies can only issue DRC visas for residents of the country they are in. However, she also showed us an official letter from the government in Kinshasa that the immediate neighbours of the DRC are exempted from this rule, explicitly listing Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi as examples. She also phoned the DRC embassy in Lusaka (Zambia) for us and got confirmed that we could be issued a visa there. So we now have a choice and cross fingers thant these guys all received the same letter from Kinshasa. We shall see...

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no risk - no fun

Day 14
Hello again from tropical Vilanculos in Mozambique. We are still enjoying ourselves in beautiful Mozambique and will continue to do so for another one or two days until we cross into Zimbabwe.
The last couple of days have been pretty lucky ones for us. Since the last update we stopped over in Tofo for one day. All the keen divers of you might know the place for it's diving resorts. And apart from that it is the Tofo beach which is just stunning. It goes on for km on end without any houses, without anyone on the beach. And it is the perfect mix of white sand, turqoise ocean and blue sky which creates the perfect playground for ocean lovers. In Tofo we booked ourselves onto a boat trip for snorkeling with whale sharks. The boat trip itself was already a great experience. We cruised along the neverending beach in search of whale sharks while watching nearby Humpback Whales breach and play around as a happy family. And after a while a Whale Shark was spotted for us and the four keen snorkelers on board dived in. Once under water we were only meters away from the shark. And OMG was that a massive monster! Whale sharks are the largest fish on the planet, not counting in whales for they are mammals. The one that we met that day was approximately 10-12m long. And even though they are sharks, lucky for us they only feed on plankton. So there we were in the ocean together with a huge speckled shark. Just elegantly swimming along with us, more like just floating a metre or two underneath the surface. That was sooo cool.
It is however not the big attractions like the whales and sharks which fascinate me most but the little everyday routine stuff. Even now I am not over the initial sensation of being in Africa yet. And just sitting on my little Suzuki and just riding along is an awesome feeling.

I often think back to the planning phase. One and a half years ago when the idea came up and I spend many sleepless nights over books and on the web for information gathering. And drawing all the info I could get onto a big pencilled map of the continent. It has been very clear that I wanted to go to Africa. Back then I couldn't explain why. But now I know. It's not so much for the elefants or lions or Kilimandjaro or safari part of it. Even though all that is cool. But it's much more about the everyday's life bit. To live in between the attractions and see Africa as it is outside the tourism hubbs.

Around a year ago the excitement got even bigger when I was sitting at a friend's house in Sydney and we spent a long evening watching photos and listening to stories about their two previous long adventure trips through Africa. Back then everything was still so uncertain for me.

Then the excitement got almost unbearable the week before leaving for the trip.

And now we are here. This is what it was all about. This is it. Living the dream that was just a dream for so long. Things that seemed so exotic back then are now routine. But no less exciting. It all comes together here. And now. Cruising along on my little Suzuki, feeling the heat of the tropical sun, smelling the smoke of the little grassfires people light for cooking in front of their little huts and hearing the chatter of the women walking in colourful groups along the road with huge buckets balancing on their heads.
Every day we wake up to a blood red sun rising over the east. Every day again we camp with a sun setting red as blood in the west. And while we're lighting the camp fire to the alien sound of crickets and unfamiliar birds we are watching a huge red moon rise. In between all that we look into many smiling black faces while we are cruising along. People who just get along with their daily routine as they probably have done for many years and still, for us watching these people is just as fascinating as it is for them to see these two guys cruising past on these unbelievably huge bikes as it is now our routine. A random moment in time which is nothing special at a random location in Africa suddenly becomes a memorable event for all of us. That is the stuff I wanted to see and wanted to live for in Africa, the stuff in between things, the little everyday routines, the conversation with locals, the warm handshakes and genuine smiles. And I am loving every minute of it. Cruising along is like watching a good movie, there is so much dynamic and colour in everything. And as soon as you stop the perspective changes completely and you are immediately part of the same fascinating film.

Another very pleasent experience found us last night. We stopped in Vilanculos for buying some stuff for dinner and getting ready for camping. When we were suddenly aproached by another white guy. And so we met Uli, a German expat who happend to own a guest house in Vilanculos. And as it turns out he loves motorbikes and touring as much as we do. He has a couple of KTM 450's and 640's in his workshop and prepares himself for a major bike trip through Mozambique. Ready to start in just two days. So we ended up staying at his guesthouse and had a great chat about motorbikes and Mozambique and the life as expat while sitting by the campfire. If any of you guys ever travel to Vilanculos, I can only recommend saying hello to Uli at his guesthouse 'Casa Guci' and you will hear some amazing stories about what you can do with a KTM in Mozambique!

Well in case you do ever travel to Mozambique, let me just give you a quick wrap up what it is like, based on our experience here. Our route took us from Swaziland to Maputo and then North till Vilanculos and from there another 250km north and then straight west towards the border to Zimbabwe.
Mozambique is a stunning place to travel through full of amazing people. Although most major attractions have to do with diving or snorkelling and are quite pricey. A standard dive will cost you around AU$65. Also accomodation in these dive resorts will set you back a couple of hundred dollars a night. Backpacker hostels can be found in every decent size town and cost around the same as in Australia. (AU$20 a night). Petrol is available every 100 or so km along the main road from a major service station and is of good quality. But also at a rather high price of beyond AU$1.60 per litre. The further north you go the more expensive it gets. ATM are everywhere but in the smallest towns. The most I could get out of them on my Visa card was 5000MTK (AU$ 167) which will last you for a couple of days. Food is available from supermarkets, these are getting very rare once you are north of Inhambane. Supermarkets are just a bit cheaper than in western countries. Beer is really cheap though (AU$ 8 for a sixpac). Every village also has a market but there is not much to buy from those. It's mostly for local clientel so they sell big buckets of salt or sugar or straw or palm leaves or live chicken etc. You can however pick up some fresh fruit for cheap prices as well. And also soft drinks for next to nothing. But again, once you get north of Inhambane the markets are getting more and more useless for hungry travellers. We live mostly of bread and bread rolls which are fresh and delicious and available from bakery stalls in every 5th or so village market.
The quality of the sealed N1, which is the only main arterial road is very good. There is a pothole or two further north but nothing much to worry about. However, if you turn to what the map identifies as 'unsealed' roads to the east of the N1 you pretty much always end up in a deep sandpit. Believe me, we did try many of them. Apparently the roads to the west of the N1 are decent quality graded gravel but we will see about that tomorrow when we turn west towards Zimbabwe. And when you go along the N1 be aware of the speed cameras in many villages!
In terms of safety our experience showed Mozambique as an extremely safe country. People tell you honest prices for goods at the market and do not negotiate. You are hardly ever hasseled by people trying to sell you stuff or asking for money and if they do you just say 'no' and they leave you alone. Traffic in Maputo may seem a bit chaotic but is manageable, outside Maputo traffic is no problem at all and people generally obey the rules.
Good spots for camping are very easy to find and it never took us long. If you setup camp and are approached by locals it is always just to greet you or to see what's going on in their neighbourhood. If we camp in sight of someone we usually go and say hello first. And even if we never speak a common language it always ended up a good fun conversation and us camping there with no worries. From what we were told the land mine problem is only a real problem in the far North where dodgy areas are signposted if mines are expected in the vicinity (that's what locals say). However, many local people warned us of Cobras and we did indeed see one just a day ago crossing the road in front of us and making a couple of people jump. So be careful when bushcamping in grassy areas.
Highlights of Mozambique include lots of diving stuff and if you're not into diving the distances between other sights are quite daunting. The famous Gorongosa NP will not let you enter on a motorbike so you need to find someone with a car to catch a ride.
In terms of bike parts I don't think Mozambique has anything to offer for western style adventure bikes. You see a lot of Honda XL125 around and they are the biggest bikes you see. And there is a couple of chinese 50cc bikes too. Local bike shops only cater for those sort of little bikes and I doubt even Maputo would have a shop with spares for bigger bikes. But I guess that is not unexpected.

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no risk - no fun

Day 16, 17 and 18
Another day, another country. Mozambique has been a fantastic place to ride a motorbike. However, there is huge distances between tourist highlights. The only other significant one on our list of interesting places would be up in the far north. More than 1000km along a straight stretch of road did seem too long for us though to just see another archipel of islands. So we turned left instead, onto my favourite road so far. It's the one connecting the N1 main road with the little town of Espungabera on the border to Zimbabwe. It is a beautiful gravelroad, meandering through some typical Mozambiquean bushland with tiny villages dotted along the road. Villages no bigger than three or four huts. It is just the perfect road to ride my little Suzuki on and she totally agreed with me in that, smoothly rolling along with her little 650cc heart calmly beating. Switching into 3rd gear and accelerating up the hill, little pieces of gravel flying either side. Top of the hill, switching into fourth gear and letting her roll down, slaloming around rocks and potholes at around 80km/h on a perfectly warm spring day. Martin on his bike on my right hand side to avoid any of us breathing in the big orange dust cloud which covers everything behind us. Close to Espungabera the road finds it's way through the mountains where we got rewarded with some beautiful views back into the plains of bushland in Mozambique.
Our strategy is to cross borders in rather small crossing points, not the main road ones. So we hope the officials are less stressed and less prone to bribes or money extorsion. And well, it sort of works. We crossed from Espungabera into Zimbabwe. Leaving Mozambique was a friendly and easy affair. Entering Zimbabwe seemed to be too. We paid our $30 and got issued a 30 day visa straight away. The bikes got in with a Temporary Import Permit so we did not need to use our Carnet. And that was it. But then, just before the last boom gate the Customs officer insisted that everyone (not just us) showed all items to be imported into Zimbabwe. Which means for us completely unpacking all our panniers and explaining every single item. But hey, it was a sunny day and the officer was a really friendly one. Just doing his job. So we had a friendly chat about our underwear, our spare spark plugs and the mosquito spray, explained the can of chain lube and the camera zoom lens and two hours later were free to pack the lot back in with the words 'Thank you for your patience, have a wonderful stay in Zimbabwe'.
Ten minutes later we were stopped at a Police checkpoint. The two officers simply bombarded us with questions, faster than we could reply. Almost in military style. So we stopped the bikes again, parked them out of the way and in our most friendly manner went through all their harshly asked questions with them, making things up as we went along (where will you stay tonight? And tomorrow night? etc). Ten minutes later they were running out of questions and we were out of there. And from then on we were cruising along in another super friendly country in Africa. Here we are, Zimbabwe, under the care of Comrade Robert Mugabe.
The first Zimbabwean town behind the border for us was Chipinge. And what a difference it was to Mozambique. There were fully stocked supermarkets, delicacies like yogurt and chocolate and orange juice in them. ATMs tendering US$, the (temporarily) official currency here. Which is really handy to be able to stock up on hard currency for the onward travel. Prices are similar to Mozambique. And people just as friendly. And English is again the official language which makes communication very easy.
Let's just pick one example of our experience with Zimbawe people: as usual we just camp somewhere off a little road and not on any official sites. This time we just went off the main road, the terrain either side was really flat with a few bushes and some big Baobab trees and some little rocks. No problem for our sturdy bikes. Once out of sight of the road we looked around and collected some wood for a little campfire to barbeque our tasty looking sausages from the supermarket. All of the sudden this guy appears, bare foot but wearing a shirt with 'Police' written on it. After our earlier experience we now expected trouble. But with a big smile on his face he was just saying hello and was laughing a bit about our pathetic little pile of fire wood. He offered us to camp next to his house some further down the road. But at this stage we were already too set up to move on and declined his offer so he just disappeared into the bush again. Hours later, after we gave up our unsuccessful efforts on the fire and cooked our sausages on the camping stove, two people stepped out of the dark towards us. It was him again with his wife. Just saying hello again and dropping off a perfectly dry and big log of timber for us to use for cooking. And disappearing again into the night with a smile. Really cool, hey?
The landscape is also quite different compared to Mozambique. Just behind the border we rode through some beautiful dark green rainforest in the southern part of the Eastern Highlands. But very soon it changed to a brown flat landscape with scattered bushes and huge Baobab trees. Some of those are just massive, trunk diameters larger than the lengths of our bikes. Also part of the mix are some huge rocks, almost mountains of granite. And a couple of round brick huts with straw roof.
People are very friendly but appear to be in more hardship than their Mozambiquean friends. We are asked for money more often but still left alone when we say 'no'. There are less colours around and more people walking barefoot.
The roads we travelled on so far are awesome quality. Main roads are tar. And even gravelroads are nice and hard and of the kind that you only need to focus not to get trapped in minor ruts. Or run over a sharp edge of rock. 60km/h is no problem at all on Zimbabwean gravel. So far.

After three weeks and more than 3500km since Johannesburg the bikes are holding up fine. Only some minor things come to the surface every now and then. Just today I had to repair the fuel hose which started to leak a lot. Where it connects to the inline fuel filters the rubber hose started to develop cracks and one of those became big enough that a small continuous stream of fuel shot out. Luckily it happened while the bike was parked and not too much fuel poured over the hot engine. I cut off the cracked ends of the hose and also filed the outside diameter of the fuel line connections on the filters smaller to reduce the outwards pressure onto the fuel hose. And reinforced the hose with duct tape. And hope it will last a bit.
Martin had to fight with his bike too. After all those dust roads he was keen to check the airfilter. But the three small bolts which hold the airfilter cover did sit so tight that none of us could get them loose. And we ended up pretty much destroying the bolt heads. And one screwdriver. It was only later in a small workshop and with the help of an electric grinder that we got access to the airfilter.
Also recently we developed a habit to thoroughly check our tyres after we discovered some big thornscembedded in them. There is a lot of stuff with massive thorns growing here and often some twigs or branches are just blown on the road. So far we managed to gercaway with no flats ( touch wood).
Till now our tyres are holding up actually pretty well. But latest before we enter the DRC we will need new ones. Has any of you been able to source some tyres in Rwanda or Burundi? These will most likely be the last countries before we enter the Congo. Our last resort would be that the tyre shop in Pretoria which fitted Martin's new tyres could send some across to Burundi. But that sounds rather expensive.
Riding my little Suzuki is still so much fun, even after all those km. Or probably because of them. It sounds odd but I start to know the bike to a degree that I can hear and feel if something is wrong. Something like my dirty air filter. The bike handles so well on the roads in Zimbabwe that even sandy bits start being fun. If they are not too deep. Then I still panic. And curse. However, we met two touring motorcyclists from South Africa here in Zimbabwe which their big ccm shiny european bikes. And then again I realised, while we are here in Africa, you could offer me any bike in the world, I would not swap my little Suzuki for it. She somehow seems to be made for this adventure of ours. And is truly fun to ride in the terrain we encountered so far. So keep your Katooms. And keep your Beamers. At least for now. I'll stick to my little Suzuki. And Africa is still heaps fun.

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no risk - no fun