Having read that the internet was not the greatest in Mozambique, where I was headed next, I had decided to hole up in Blantyre for a few days and get some research done. Stayed at some little cottage up in the hills:



and had electricity maybe 20-25% of the time. They had a generator on site but it was just me and one other guest, so they really didn't want to run it just for the two of us. I had to ask again and again for them to turn it on, which was pretty frustrating. It did allow me to get a lot of non-internet stuff done, like sorting thru photos and other logistical stuff like that.

After a few days I kind of gave up on getting anything done on the internet and it was chicken bus time again:



As usual I was the only mzungu on the bus. We were heading out of Blantyre to the Mozambique border between Mulanje (Mal) and Milange (Moz). I had read about how crucial it was to make sure you were on the Milange bus instead of the Mulanje bus, in order to not find yourself stuck 25km from the border, and made sure to make sure I was on the correct bus.

You already know what happens next, but I'll keep typing. Maybe I'll toss in some photos of villages we went thru so you forget and can be surprised. Here we are departing from the market area in Blantyre:




and what it looks like going thru one of the many small towns we went thru:



lots and lots of little shops like that with handpainted signs. This has been common in almost every country in Africa that I've been. It's going to be weird going back to a country with most signs produced by machines.

I don't know how people manage to keep their clothes so clean when constantly walking around in endless dirt (which constantly gets kicked up into huge clouds of dirt):



but somehow they do.

This was one of my favorites of the small businesses we drove past as we went thru small towns / villages again and again:



while I know that it does not actually say "Nail in ya" above the word coffin, I can't think of it any other way.

This was another solid entry:



lots of businesses with the word "God" in them all over Malawi. Pretty much everyone is religious.

Mulange is a decent sized town, and as we got close, the usual pedestrian traffic slowed us down a bit:



but we eventually made it into the town center.

And that's when everyone got off the bus.

I stayed in my seat until the driver came over and told me to get off. I said that I had paid for passage to the border, and that we had confirmed it when I got on. He said that there weren't enough people who wanted to go, so we were now stopped in Mulanje and weren't going any further.

We went back and forth like this for a bit, but I eventually wore him down and he told me he'd put me on another bus that was going to the border. This seemed like it was going to be about as good as things would get, so I agreed and exited the bus. We walked down the road a bit and found a bus that was mostly full. The driver negotiated with the bus handler for a bit, then told me to get on. There were three chickens in this bus but they were in a bag and well-behaved. The handler asked for some kwacha, and I just looked at the first driver. He kind of sighed and pulled out some cash to pay for my fare, and off we went, eventually arriving at the border after many many stops beforehand:

That minibus is supposed to hold 12 people. There were 24 of us in there, lol. Constantly stopping at police checkpoints all the way. We probably spent more time stopped than actually moving. Each time the driver had to get out and negotiate with the police how much the bribe would be.

The border crossing from Malawi into Mozambique was memorable. The exit process from Mal was no big deal. The Moz entry, however.. the Moz border guards went thru all my bags and questioned some stuff but eventually let me go thru without incident. They were perplexed that I was lugging around all the dumb coins I've been lugging around. They were also very curious about why I was carrying around so many empty Ziploc bags. Doubt I explained it well, but they let me keep them.

I also managed to hide the one pocket in my backpack where my USD is stashed. It's the only part of my stuff that they didn't go thru, which was nice. It's nerve wracking (and my nerves are not easily wracked these days) to have any kind of border control go thru your cash, especially somewhere like Moz where the police are absolutely notorious for corruption. Started having flashbacks to the experience in Bulgaria where the police did find my cash and it seemed like things might go sideways for a bit.

But they didn't find that pocket, so all was well. They did search literally everything else I had with me. The most thorough search I've had to date by far. I don't speak much Portuguese but I do have some Spanish and so we kind of had a capish?ing conversation during the process. They don't get many mzungu going thru that border so they were curious about me.

The one thing that they did try to confiscate was my malarial test kits & treatment meds. They said that I couldn't bring them in without being a doctor. Luckily that was early in the search, and they seemed to eventually forget about them. Mostly I think they were just looking for a bribe. They also wanted to confiscate some biscuits (cookies) I had, I assume because they were hungry. That was also forgotten when they found the coins.

After getting thru the Moz search (as well as a far less intrusive Mal exit search), I walked over to the immigration building and got the visa sorted. Kinda got a little scammed here when the officer asked if I had Moz kwacha to pay with and I said no but I'd go get some and he said no no you can pay in USD. Ended up overpaying relative to what it would have cost in kwacha but it was getting late and I didn't want to still be at the border at night.

A bicycle taxi guy had been following me around ever since I got off the bus, and he seemed honest enough, so I let him take me to the black market forex guys that hang out at every border. I exchanged the last of my Mal kwacha for Moz kwacha and the forex guy that I dealt with was the complete opposite of the usual guy. This guy was clean cut, well dressed, didn't try to pull any of the exchange scams, and we both agreed on a rate that was not too far from the interbank rate while still giving him a decent profit. We laughed when we both pulled out our phones and called up XE at the same time. I ended up triple checking the notes he gave me just because I was so amazed at how smoothly everything had gone and figured I must have been missing something, but nope, everything was perfect. Best black market currency exchange I've ever done!

Now that I had some Moz kwacha, I was able to pay the bicycle taxi guy for a ride into Milange:



that's from sitting on the seat behind him as he pedaled along. We had agreed on a price which of course he tried to change halfway thru. I didn't budge, but I offered him a bonus if he would teach me some Portuguese as we traveled, which he did.

Spent the night in Milange without any evidence of spice flowing, and got another chicken bus the next morning to Mocuba, another town about 200km further inland. Most of the bus drivers have their nickname or something like that stickered on the top of the windshield and this one was no exception:



not quite sure why Relax Boy is pulling his boxers up like that, but he did get me a pineapple Fanta at one of the stops along the way so we're all good.

Mocuba is a pretty small place, and I only stayed there to break up the ride to the much larger town of Nampula. One thing I started to notice was that bicycle taxis were everywhere:



which is a trend I'd continue to see all over Moz, even more so than in Mal.

Also managed to lock up some Moz chicken wings:



which were superior to any chicken wings I've ever had before, and I've had the good stuff from down in Carolina from the locals.

Everyone in Moz speaks Portuguese and very few people speak English, but my Spanish was enough to get by since many words are the same or at least similar:

The bicycle taxis were a little slow so I mostly stuck to the motorcycle taxis:



for the trips around town. Wasn't too thrilled with the hotel I found:



but didn't stay long. Caught a moto taxi down to the bus area:



and hung out for a while chatting with a Moz girl who was also waiting for the bus.

A large bus eventually arrived after a few hours:



but it was heading the other direction. Turns out that my hotel had sent me to the wrong area. Those guys guys on the other side of the gate are waiting for it to open so they can sell food to the people on the bus.

I spoke with the Moz girl some more and she said she knew the right place to catch a bus and would show me. We each hopped on a moto taxi and ended up here:



which is a fuel station on the outskirts of town. I was a little skeptical, but TIA, so I went with it.

The driver of my moto taxi had a pretty sweet shirt:



We hung out there for a while with no buses showing up and any and all chicken buses just whizzing by without stopping. I eventually decided to make a sign that said NAMPULA, and stood by the side of the road holding it. She was convinced this would not work and told me to just wait for a bus.

About 10 minutes of holding the sign later, a chicken bus stopped. They confirmed they were headed to Nampula, and in I went. It was much later than I had wanted to depart but oh well.

Another standard chicken bus, which are called chapas in Moz:




The ride is supposed to take about four hours (400km away) but it ended up being just under eight hours. That's after the late start. We stopped at 15-18 police checkpoints, with the same deal as Mal - driver goes off to negotiate bribe with police, then returns and we go on our way. This ranged from 30 seconds to 25 minutes. Once or twice we were just waved thru the roadblock.

When the chapa stops in a town, it gets swarmed by people who want to sell stuff, usually fruit, drinks, and nuts. What also happens is kids (mostly just in the more remote rural areas) stick their hands in to try and touch me. I'm mostly OK with this because I'm not the typical chapa passenger and it's not like they have tv, so they may never have seen someone that looks like me before, and they are just curious kids. They would go nuts when I talked with them, tho. I asked one in Portuguese if he spoke English and he said "yes", so I asked him in English where he learned English, and his friends erupted at his blank stare. I then asked him his name in Portuguese and when he replied, I called him Professor (name) and his friends just absolutely lost it and started chanting "Professor (name)! Professor (name)!" while he beamed and strutted about. Not going to disrespect his name by trying to type it out phonetically.

A few photos of how the chapa would get swarmed when we stopped in any of the small villages:






and from the outside:

It was a long eight hours. I think I posted this as a one off before, but at one point the dude next to me just kind of decided to sleep on me:



and another time, some dude who wanted to get in the chapa and was denied entry decided the best thing to do would be to just cling to the outside of the vehicle as we drove along:



he managed to hang on for a few kilometers, too. All the while holding a yelling match with the driver about what I can only assume is the unfairness of being denied a seat.

Eventually we did arrive in Nampula. Unfortunately it was dark at that point. I try to avoid arriving anywhere in the dark for both safety and navigational reasons, but managed to make it to my hotel easily enough. Yet another entry in the mosquito net photo collection:



but this one was superior to all previous nets, due to being suspended from that hanging wooden frame. Far, far better than the usual cone spreading method that comes from it being hung from a peg in the ceiling.

The internet at the hotel was Africa-decent, so I was able to catch up on some research. That was good since Project Fi decided to stop working then, and didn't work for the entirety of the rest of the time in Moz. Went back and forth with their support people for a while but it was a complete waste of time. Usually Google is pretty good at having service where they say that they have service, but Moz was pretty much a complete fail.

Lucky for me, as a former Portuguese colony, I was able to drown my no-internet sorrows in delicious pastel de nata:

Thread still delivers.

Moz has some other things going for it as well, including their colorful animal currency:



that one is worth about $0.34 USD, which I was quite pleased about since the rhinos are one of my favorites.

The next stop was Ilha de Mozambique which is a little island off the coast. Got a ride there with one of the Nampula hotel staff who also was moonlighting as a private driver. He had a Portuguese guy flying in and was taking him to IdM anyway, so he let me pay a small amount to take the back seat. Sooo much better than a chapa!

IdM used to be the capital a long time ago during colonial rule, but is now just a little tourist spot. There's a 3km long bridge to get there that is similar to the kind in the Florida Keys, except that it's single lane:



with little turnoffs every so often for traffic to pass each other.

The buildings on the island are weathered, to put it mildly. Here's the post office:



and a pretty standard street corner:




there are some nice photo ops of a few old piers that are no longer used:




and lots of dhows sailing around the island:



which you can ride on one as a tourist experience but they charge stupid rates like $100/hour. No one I met went on a ride. A Moz guy I hung out with told me that a couple of tourists came in once and paid that, and ever since then, that's what the dhow guys charge and they end up making nothing since no one wants to pay that much.

IdM was a decent spot to chill for a few days. The electricity worked most of the time, and the food was great:



Yeah, that's sailor soup.

There were also some OK views:




and I made some new friends:



these kids are all sitting on a bench that I was trying to get a photo of. They decided they should be the subject of the photo instead of the bench and I suppose they were right in retrospect.

After I took that photo and started to walk away, they all started asking for a dollar. "Amigo, one dollar?" to which I replied "Nao" which is "No" in Portuguese. They also asked for cake: "Amigo, bolo?" and they didn't want to take no for an answer and kept following me as I walked around the city. More and more appeared from nowhere and I eventually had about a dozen kids following me around chanting "Amigo, one dollar!" to which I kept saying "Nao". They didn't give up so I started singing the exchange as a song:

Amiiiiiiiiiiiiigo, one dooooooollar
Nao, nao, nao
Amiiiiiiiiiiiiigo, one boooooloooo
Nao, nao, nao

and then they started singing the amigo line and I would sing the Nao line. After walking along singing for about ten minutes, one of them started singing over my Nao and turning the song into:

Amiiiiiiiiiiiiigo, one dooooooollar
Sim, sim, sim
Amiiiiiiiiiiiiigo, one boooooloooo
Sim, sim, sim

Sim is of course "yes" in Portuguese. Got a hilarious video of them singing it.


Checked out the fish market but there wasn't much to check out, given how small the island is:




so took photos of rusted old boats instead:




Here's where the people lived:



which was mostly at or below the waterline. Can't imagine what it's like when there is real weather there. It was pretty decent the entire time I was there:




While hanging out at the island I had been going back and forth with a Moz dive place a little north up the coast. It was pretty expensive in general as it was a luxury resort, which is not my kind of thing, and the transfers to get there were also kinda dumb, but they put me in touch with another person they were expecting who was also going to be in IdM and we decided to share a transfer up and split the cost.

Caught a sweet clothing auction on the way out:




and then got in the car with a British women to make our way north to the dive site. The roads were pretty sketchy:



most of the way. More on that later.

Awesome updates, Chop!

We switched cars three different times as the road got worse and worse. Eventually we met up with one of the resort staff at a tiny village in the middle of nowhere and went with her in a sturdy SUV for the final leg. Even that SUV was not adequate for the last part, tho. We ended up having to get a farm tractor to hitch us up:




and tow us thru one of the really bad sections:




which was apparently standard from what the driver told us.

The resort was nice. It was an eco-resort, not a high end resort with people waiting on you all the time. I had my own little cabin:




which was just a few steps away from the beach:




and remarkably bug-free.

Except for the compost toilet:




which was filled with all kinds of nightmare bugs. The spiders would weave webs on the seat so nothing escaped, but I made the mistake of shining a light down there one time and... well, I'll never do that again.

I'm not much of a flora person, but there were a lot of beautiful flowers everywhere:






and I have a cousin who is into exotic flowers, so I snapped a few shots for her.

The beach was mostly deserted almost the entire time I was there:




with only the British woman and maybe 3-4 other people at the resort. For whatever reason, they didn't go to the beach very often. Not sure what they did. I was always out there chasing ghost crabs and checking out the fish that would jump from tide pool to tide pool.

This is where I ate breakfast each morning:




and it was nice to look out over the Indian ocean as the sun came up over it.

Another angle for some additional perspective:




you can still see that little breakfast table in the corner.

That is one hip chicken.

LOL

Dayum! That looks good! Open a chain of joints selling those in USA#1 and you'll be a billionaire.

I don't think I've ever seen paper money that's supposed to have a hole.

The diving was decent, but I wouldn't say it was great. Very few large predators. We did go deep one day and the guide showed me the biggest moray I've ever seen in my life. Didn't get a decent photo, unfortunately. The thing looked a good 4m/13ft long.

There were a ton of small colorful fish, which I like:




and I was pleased to find a blackspotted puffer with nice blue coloration:




The highlight was probably swimming in a huge cloud of thousands of fusiliers:



which I never seem to get tired of doing.

We spent some time doing a wall dive one day with some massive fan corals:



which I usually don't care about, but these were impressive.

I also managed to get a sweet photo of a dutch guy that showed up and was diving for the first time in decades. He was pretty happy with this one:



but who doesn't love a swim-thru shot, amirite?


The diving in southern Moz is supposedly fantastic with lots of whale sharks and other huge fish. Guess that gives me a reason to go back some day.

So how did you handle that? Poop in the jungle? Hold it the whole time?

The hole in that note is covered by a piece of clear plastic, it's not easy to see with that photo angle. Those notes were similar to Hong Kong dollars if you've ever used one - slippery plastic.

The compost toilet was not the best experience. That bin with the handle sticking out of it is full of ash, and the handle is on a ladle. You're supposed to ladle ash in on top of your deposit, and that's the way you "flush". So what happens is an enormous mound of **** eventually accumulates down in the hole, with light layers of ash supposedly separating each individual visit. In reality, people are not good at aiming the ladle, so it's mostly just lots of **** all over the hole, which is pretty deep. If you fell in the hole, you were not going to be able to climb out, even as a fully grown adult.

My routine was to rap on the closed lid a few times before opening it, to encourage anyone hiding at the top to retreat to the depths. Then I'd open the lid and hit the seat a few times with the ladle to do the same for anyone hiding under the seat. That was about the best I was able to come up with. I fought the good fight and I'd like to say I didn't get bitten but... well, I'm kind of used to things biting me these days.

Just bought 50 more alcohol injection prep swabs yesterday, speaking of things biting me. They are really good for dealing with bites.

At least you had some quality toilet paper to get you through.

I absolutely admire your calm attitude. 90% of stuff you describe would give me a fit.

Probably made you appreciate the asian system of hovering.

Updates from Chop are just about my favorite thing on 2+2 these days! Great stuff as usual.

I’d probably even pay him at this point...the combination of the pictures and the stories of his adventure are phenomenal.

Thread delivers, chop, as ever.

Awesome topic man.
Just been through all the stories, good stuff.

The best thread on 2+2 keeps getting better.

Last night I was talking to someone who grew up in Singapore, and she was saying how good the street food used to be, and lamenting about how they cleaned up/removed all the street vendors. I mentioned that they moved it all into boxy malls, based on this thread (I called it a travelogue). News you can use ITT.

I grew up with a composting toilet and/or outhouse (in USA#1!) and one of the horrible things (among many) about it is to see a bug that you know is from the toilet land on your plate while you are eating.

Thanks for the updates, and keep them coming!