The last chappa to Tofo.

Despite our border ‘troubles,’ we managed to get safely back to Pretoria. Unfortunately we arrived far too early in the bracingly cold early morning. We took a taxi from the Pretoria train and bus depot across town to the relatively safe and pleasant Hatfield neighborhood where we first stayed. We literally loitered outside the twenty-four hour McDonald’s for over an hour before another restaurant opened. Afterwards we gratefully dropped our bags at the same hostel and bid farewell to our travelling companions; Evan and I then grabbed a surprisingly stellar Lebanese lunch and watched a (rather disappointing) movie starring over-the-hill Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.

That evening we boarded another overnight train (no sleeper births this time) for the run to the Mozambique border. Unlike our previous overnight train adventure, this trip turned into a miserable, numbingly cold, horribly uncomfortable fifteen hour misadventure. I cannot underscore what a dire state I was in mentally at 10:00am the following morning…hungry, exhausted, and barely defrosted.

We hopped a chappa to the border less than 10 kilometers away, still jammed into a tight uncomfortable space but happy for the warmth emanating from the dozen or so bodies packed into the van. At the Mozambique border we walked through a mildly perplexing maze of construction work and random buildings to exit South Africa and then strolled past an army checkpoint to the bustling Mozambique border post. Evan and I knew that Mozambique has a penchant for unexpectedly raising visa prices and admission requirements, but we hoped for the best. Turns out, it was highway robbery, but with a fancy visa: $82 for a full page brightly colored sticker visa complete with digital picture and oh-so-snazzy hologram. A visa not dissimilar to the damn Zimbabwean visa stuck in Hewsan’s passport.

Once through border control, we grabbed a few tangerines from the roadside, piled into yet another chappa, and took off for Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. We spent an uneventful afternoon and night in Maputo; I managed to sleep for about 10 hours despite a 5AM wake-up. It had been such smooth, if exhausting, sailing for so much of the trip, and Evan and I were grateful to make it uneventfully into Mozambique. Sadly our traveler’s luck had, unbeknownst to us, also exhausted itself.

A taxi ride to the bus park in Maputo was followed by a rather epic twelve hour bus trip to the picturesque laid-back beach town of Tofo. First, as we approached Xai-Xai, roughly three hours to the north of Maputo along the coast-hugging N1, the driver began intermittently pulling on the emergency brake. The bus rolled slowly through Xai-Xai’s main strip until without warning the driver pulled to the curb, hopped down from the cab, and sprinted across the street to a faded, rundown automotive supply store. He returned within minutes holding a small generic bottle, whose contents I couldn’t make out. At the northern edge of town, the bus pulled into a garage, and Evan and I both emitted the low, barely audible moans. We are accustomed to mechanical problems in Rwanda that can delay a trip for hours and hours. Generally, those delays are tire-related, but this new dilemma appeared brake-related, which could only mean serious trouble.

Surprisingly, although the issue was the brakes, the driver, conductor, and a few guys from the garage managed to remove four wheels, change two brake disks, and replace the wheels in about two hours – highly competent (by my standards)! We were back on the road. Little did we know that the trouble had only begun.
Roughly an hour further down the horribly pitted and rough highway extending northwards from Xai-Xai towards Inhambane province, we encountered an even greater obstacle. Somehow, in the hollow of two stubby hills, a tractor trailer had jack-knifed, flipping dramatically on its side, successfully blocking the entire two lane highway and an remotely passable areas to either side of the tarmac. A long line of idling trucks, buses, and 4x4s idled impatiently and expectantly in long queues up either hill, dots of a mechanical army ant war party snaking to the crest of the far hill. Within a few moments of our arrival, private vehicles began emerging along a sandy track to our left, seemingly out of the bush itself. Some had branches stuck in grilles and leaves clinging to windshields. Soon buses began appearing, too.

Other vehicles and their drivers began to take note and braved the deep, loose sand. 4x4s managed easily with enough speed, buses failed or didn’t fail based on the drivers’ skill. Unfortunately, our driver seemed to be a congenital idiot (just wait). Our first ill-fated attempt took us away from the worn path already forming, but rather to the left, up a small rise that would cut across a small plot to the sandy track leading into the bush. We hit the rise with too many people (read: everyone; they hadn’t thought to remove passengers) and too little speed. Shit, now we’re stuck.

After assessing our predicament, the driver and conductor began an elaborate back and forth dance to extricate the stalled bus. The conductor, befitting his title, conducted by digging furiously with a shovel and instructing passengers where to place branches and other debris to ensure traction. The whole affair became a communal struggle, first against the soft, tire-eating sand and then against the slick red mud churned up by the spinning tires. The effort, by most measures demonstrated everyone was ready to get back on the road, but the driver was a moron, turning the wheels in entirely wrong directions at the most inopportune moments.

Streaked with mud and sweating from exertion in the humid Mozambique afternoon, Evan and I rued our previous luck. It seemed travel karma had finally found a cosmic cure for our earlier good fortune. Eventually, we managed to get the bus back on the road. The driver, this time with an empty bus, drove headlong at the existing sandy track. To my astonishment, he managed to get stuck again. Doh! We pushed and soon had the bus free again. We bumbled down the sandy road through cassava fields and thickets of dense brush, dodging oncoming vehicles, before finally reaching the paved highway again. Inhambane here we come!

Our earlier delays put us into Inhambane late, really late. We had expected the bus to continue to Tofo, one hour by dirt road to the east directly on the coast. The driver and conductor flatly refused and ordered us off the bus. We had little recourse since neither Evan nor I speak Portuguese. A small boy immediately approached us offering small treats and the ubiquitous coconut bread. Instead, we asked him to find us a chappa to Tofo. The ride, and day in general, had been exhausting and humbling, but we desperately wanted to make it to Tofo the same evening. I was astonished when the boy beckoned us to follow right away, mumbling something about the last chappa to Tofo. Sure enough, Evan and I piled into the very last chappa of the evening, just after 7:00PM bound for the idyllic Tofo. We wedged ourselves and packs into the back row and waited. Before long, the chappa was filled to overflowing. The driver did some sort of vexing victory circle around the bus park and then careened towards the road to Inhambane. At first count, before anyone hopped off the bus, our small Toyota minivan taxi had twenty-five – yes, 25 – people crammed into its cabin or hanging precariously from the open sliding door. Bodies were draped over bodies; hands clung to whatever stable piece of metal or flesh they could grab (or grope). I’ve been squeezed before, but this was a new level of leave-none-behind public transport. I grinned the whole way to Tofo, praising the travel gods for our last little bit of luck in a depressingly luckless day.

Look for a final installment tomorrow, wrapping up holiday stories.

Zach