Archive of BMW Motorrad Club Cape (2006 - 2019)

 

In 1997  a few mates and I planned a trip to Ibo Island and Mozambique Island, traveling overland through Zim and via Lake Malawi in our Land Rovers. Given the start of the problems in Zim and fuel shortages, at that time, the trip never got off the ground. For years now I’ve wanted to do the same or similar trip on my BMW 1200 GS adventure.  In November 2009 I committed to the trip and wasn’t short on people who wanted to join me. The original route would be just to long for the leave I had left and would give us very few days off to relax.  The new route would take us as far north as Ihla De Mozambique, traveling via Chidenguele and Gorengoza National Park. The group going would be myself, Joanne (my girlfriend), Jeanne, Henny, Nick, Clayton and Guy. We saved ourselves 2days and 1500km by shipping the bikes to JHB and flying up, Henny was the only one who rode up to Jo’ies. We landed Friday afternoon the 23^rd July and travelled the 170km from Johannesburg to my family’s farm near Stoffberg.

On the Tour Wayne 1200

 Joe Pillion

Clayton 800

Jeanne 650

Henny 1200

Nick 990

Guy 990

Nev Back up and Chef

Our 1^stday would be a big one 680km to Chidenguele, Sunset Beach Lodge. It was suggested that we fill up at the Sasol 5km before the boarder, here you can change Rands to Meticais and arrange with the lady at the bureau for a reliable runner to help you with the processing at the boarder. We got a rate of 4.5M to R1, most places in the south take Rands, but you’re not guaranteed the same rate. We got an average rate of 3M to R1 in the south and 2.5M to R1 in the North, not all places accepted Rands in the North.

 

By using the prearranged runner we saved ourselves the stress of processing through the boarder and it allowed us time to sort out the last few things on our bike. It cost us a R100 per bike to get our documents and passports stamped, including the runners fee. We also saved ourselves some cash and time by purchasing our Mozambique 3^rd party insurance through the AA before the trip. The best place to go for this is the Durbanville AA they charge R160 while Cavendish charges R190.  Remember to declare all electronic goods and be sure to keep all your documents for processing when returning to SA.

 

Instead of continuing on the EN1 through Maputo, we took the popular 100km off road route from Moamba through Maholele and rejoining the EN1 89km south of Xai-Xai. This off road section is a very nice piece of hard packed clay road; we averaged approx. 70-80km/hour. There are only a few tricky sections where you have to be careful, saying that, I would think twice about using this road if there’s been loads of rain. From there it’s a nice tar road to Xai-Xai, make sure you stick to the speed limits in the villages; we spied a few traffic policeman with radars. Once in Xai-Xai the roads deteriorate till just outside of town going north, here the road is busy being reconstructed by the Chinese. The 60km to Chidenguele is a single strip of new tar with run offs on either side to give way to oncoming traffic. Once in Chidenguele, the road to Sunset beach is 5km of sandy “twee spoer”past the lake to the sea. With tyres inflated to 2bar and fully loaded it was a challenge on the 1200 but we made it in. 

 

Sunset Beach Lodge offers some awesome camping facilities, as well as well equipped self catering chalets. Each camp site is an erected lapa with its own toilet and basin, capable of taking 4 tents, it cost R700 per night for 2 sites 8 people. It’s here we met my brother Neville in his Toyota Landcruisers 4500, fully kitted with 150 Liters Water, 300 liters fuel, deep freezers and enough food for14 days. This was my first holiday were I had to look after a big group; making sure that we got to our destination before sun down and more important safely.  My aim was to leave an hour earlier every morning and be at our next stop round lunch time also to leave us time for contingencies. That would leave us time to explore, relax and appreciate the places we were visiting for a night.  

Chidenguele camp

at camp night 1

Group shot

We stayed at Sunset beach 1 extra day to recover and make ready for the 4 days of riding to Ihla De Mozambique +-2200km. We took this time off exploring the lodges around Lake Nhambavale, it’s a huge body of water 20km long and 5km at its widest point. Each lodge on the lake has a jetty and bar where you can enjoy lunch and beers. We spent loads of time sunning on the deck over the water at Nhambavale Lodge. We had an awesome late lunch at Paraiso De Chidenguele, another lodge on the coast, next to Sunset Beach, huge calamari steaks and prawns were the order of the day. Thinking back now this day off made the trip that much better, everyone had time to get into the holiday and that made every other day that much easier.

 

relaxing at the lake

Relaxing telling war stories on the lake

 

Fully relaxed we hit the road at 6am on day 3 to get to Inhassoro,  490km away. We were advised the day before about the bad section of road lasting 40km as you left town. The first 20km is a sandy gravel section either side of the new road being constructed and the next 20km is back on the old road, dotted with massive potholes. On the bike it wasn’t too much of a problem as we could navigate them quite easily, but in a vehicle there are times when you have to leave the road to avoid them. After those 2 sections the new road starts and it’s good going for the next 214km, till you hit another section of road works for 72km. Again it’s slow going as there’s no way of passing the slower moving trucks, unless you can pop on to the new hard packed road and drop back in. Be careful if you do this as the new road is much higher than the detour section and some areas of the road are still loose gravel waiting to be compacted.

Roads North to Inhassoro

 

Roads to Inhassoro

Roads North to Inhassoro

Detour Road Works

Detour Road works

From Inharrime to Maxixe the road passes through hundreds of kilometers of palm groves, where coconuts are plentiful Besides coconuts the main economy in this region is per-peri sauce; where as in the region closer to Xai-Xai it was Cashew nuts.

On the Road to Inhassoro

Road Trade

Sitting on the bike and taking in the surrounds you realize that the whole population seems to live on the side of this corridor that connects the South to the North. The Economy that this road creates is so important to their livelihood, every 100m there’s an erected shelter selling the produce of that area, in essence it’s the longest high street I’ve ever encountered. When passing through the villages it’s hard not to notice the 1^st worlds greedy fingers stretching in to claim these communities. The 2 Cell phone companies must have sponsored loads of paint to ensure that they get each hut, or building in the villages painted in their “war colours”, a pity because the villages now all look the same. Admittedly it is a bonus to us 1^st world wanabe 3^rd world escapist as we had cell phone reception all the way up… but are we really getting away in to the wild unknown ?

Ihassoro Lodge

At Inhassoro we stayed at my Brother’s friends place, a beautiful lodge overlooking the beach. The Seta Hotel, nearby, has been renovated and has a great terrace where you can enjoy lunch and watch the activities on the beach, they also have camping facilities.

Seta Hotel

Fish for Sale

Bar at night

We enjoyed a relaxing lunch on the deck, snacking on peri peri chicken and sipping G&Ts. That night we frequented a few of the local pubs and found them to have a friendly vibe and beer is cheap, what else could we ask for. Note: There are bank facilities to draw money and a well stocked local market should you need to stock up on the bare necessities.

Day 4 was a shorter day with us only needing to travel 410km  to our next destination, Gorongosa National Park. When leaving Inhassoro  the 1^st 90km is uneven tar but still makes for good riding, I took my tyre pressure down to 2Bar to ease the ride a bit more. After the next major crossing at the Save River the road is potholed again for about 50km, nothing major but be careful. 

Crossing Save River

Road at Save

We rolled into Mequisse to refuel at the BP, we met another group of 4 guys on fully kitted GS800s here. They were on their way to Beira, one of many stops for them; these lucky men are riding Cape To Cape. They left Cape Town on 4^th August and are making their way up the east coast of Africa to Cape Head North in Northern Europe. They are the Marco Polo Team from Italy and they are raising money for CUAMM-doctors with Africa, this organisation raises money for scholarships to help students studying medicine at the University of Beira.  

Team Marco

Lunch stop

It was exciting to meet like minded travelers on motorcycles and to see them supporting such a great cause, we wished them well and continued on our way. It was getting hot now and I could see the groups concentration drifting so not long after this stop we pulled over for lunch. Another valuable lesson I learnt this run, was to make sure you watch the group at all times and ensure you rest and feed them regularly. This made it even more important for me to plan my stops correctly.

Gorongosa has been reintroducing game since 2006 mostly from the Kruger National Park. The Carr foundation has been working with the Mozambique government to restore the ecosytems at Gorongoza and have signed a deal to help co-manage the park for the next 20 years. From the turn off it’s 11km of rutted dirt road through some beautiful bushveld, exactly what we needed to break up the monotony of the tar travelled that day. The new chalets and campsites are situated 18km from the main gate and you can only enter in a car or 4x4. I made prior arrangements before we left SA to park the bikes overnight at the main gate. Despite the booking and making the prior arrangement it seem that this was going to be a problem. See the park and the gate are run by 2 different organisations and the gate team was not happy that the park management had made these plans on their behalf. After lengthy debate I took some deep breaths, calmed my self and asked the park official where we could stay in the area.

 

Gorongosa River

Gorongosa Gate

Thankfully the closest place to camp was 4km away, back down the road we’d come. The campsite is owned by Piet Van Zyl and his family; they left SA 8 years ago and are now establishing this new camp site. The facilities were top notch, each camp had it’s own tent and lapa and best of all there were hot showers.

Campsite at Gorongosa

Squeaky clean we relaxed around the fire enjoying some more great food prepared by Neville, Avocado Ritz, to start followed by lamb chops, boerie with pap and sous.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

The next 2 days would be long ones in the saddle. From Gorongosa we’d be traveling 560km to Mocuba, crossing the Zambezi at Caia 280km away. The idea was to take the tar road that was built to create a corridor for the trucks supplying the building of the new bridge over the Zambezi.  The project started in 2007 to build the longest bridge over the Zambezi, and was completed in late 2009. At Caia we refueled and crossed the impressive new structure, there is a toll to pay 80M per car and 100M for  a car and trailer. The guard was a bit confused when we arrived at the toll booth and let us through with out having to pay, we think it was down to the fact that there are no motorcycles indicated on the tariff sign.

Crossing Zambezi

At Nicuadala we turned left to Mocuba another 120km away, now the trade on the side of the road, is wood and coal. This is the only town I had no clear place planned to stay, the GPS indicated a hotel and a mission to camp at. Investigation showed that the hotel wasn’t an option and that left the mission. Had we not had the GPS I would not have been able to find the mission run by Roneldo and Julia, as it’s very nondescript. It’s very basic but offers more then adequate camping space. Yes it has a loo and a shower that you can use, but note that there is no running water so everything is done with a bucket of water, that you need to draw from the river about 100 meters away. The group decided against the shower option and we’d al be roughing it that night. There was something quite liberating about not knowing were we’d be staying, winging it so to speak, and finding the place we did in then end made it that little bit more special.

Camping at the Mission

Rise and shine was at 4 the next morning so we can leave early enough to cover the next 580km to Ilha De Mozambique, not that it would be a problem as we were all in the routine by now. Crossing the Licungo River we headed north for about 19km before we hit our first real difficult section of road, for the trip, 47km of dusty clay potholes with small sections of road connecting them, well so it felt.

Road North from Mocuba to Ihla

 

Raod north from Mocuba to Ilha

  

Raod north from Mocuba to Ilha

Trade up North  

This section was very slow going, the road is very bad with huge potholes, at times you have to slow down to a crawl to negotiate the holes. It’s also a very busy section with loads of trucks and bakkies trying to find the best line around these craters. Thankfully once you through this section the rest of the route to Ilha is good tar. We rolled in to Nampula Mozambique’s 3^rd biggest city around midday, a good place once again to re stock. We found a very clean Shoprite-Checkers in the center of town, where we stocked up on beer, bread, coke, water and spirits. The last 177km went by quickly and we arrived in Ilha around 2 that afternoon.

 

We spent the next 2 days relaxing and exploring on the island and surrounding areas. The island is 3km long and 500m wide at its widest point and connected to the mainland by a 3.4km long bridge.

Bridge to Ilha

Crossing to Ilha

Bridge to Ilha

The mid section of the bridge is being repaired at the moment but as I understand it the bridge is always being worked on so no different to the N1 between Colesberg and Beaufort West; just a much prettier place to be.

Riding around Ilha

Riding on Ilha

The 1^st section of the island is the poorer quarter, very vibrant and busy with the goings on of life. It’s here you can visit the night market to get basic things like fruit, veg as well as Pau (bread made from the root of a local plant). The hospital is situated in the center of the town, this was once a magnificent structure but over time has become dilapidated and the hurricane that hit the coast in 2000 hasn’t helped matters. As you make your way to the north end of the island you get the commercial marked open from 06:30, to 15:00 here you can get water, chocolate, fizzy cool drinks, soap etc. Across the way is the bank with an ATM and you can exchange money here too, we got a rate of 5M to R1. Up from there you find the richer old Portuguese section of the island, it’s starting to be revived with a few overseas investors coming to live on the island.

Streets of Ilha 

We met Abdulla at the campsite and he was our champion guide. He showed us all the interesting and historical sites on the island, the old fort and the formers Governors residence, Palacio De Sao Paulo, now the museum, they are all well worth the visit. He was a great help when it came to finding all the odds and sods we needed, like pau ,beer, spirits, water and most importantly ice (always ask the source of the water they using) I suggest that you befriend one of these local guys, they’ll approach you explaining that they not an official guide, but they can show you all the places of interest for a tip. Abdulla had a great demeanor when I met him and the fact that he spoke English as well as he did made him worth every penny. He also seemed to read the group well and he had this knack f being part of the group rather then a hindrance and or too pushy.

Our Guide

 

Lunch on Ilha

Lunch on Ilha

Life on Ilha

Life on Ilha

Palacio De Sao Paulo

Palacio De Sao Paulo

Life on Ilha

Life on Ilha

Up Skirt?

 

When not on the island we relaxed at our campsite opposite the island just before the bridge. It’s an awesome little space on the beach, under the palm trees with clean ablutions. Be warned once you get in the north there is no running water and all water needs to be drawn from wells or river into buckets, Casuarina campsite at Ilha De Mozambique is no different. But after a long hot day on the beach the effort of drawing your water form the well and carrying your bucket to the shower is well worth it. It cost us 200M per vehicle, 200M per trailer, 120M per bikes and 200M per person per night to camp there.

Camp at Ilha

Ilha at night from the camp

Dhow at Camp

The second day there we decided to do an outride to Chocas the old Portuguese holiday town. It’s a lovely drive to get there, and is one of the places to go if you want pristine white beaches, not that we had a bad beach at our campsite.  There are some beautiful lodges on this side and some fantastic apartments on the beach in the town, you can see that it’s still frequented by the richer locals.

Chocas Beach

Outrider

Outrider

Outrider

Outrider

Outrider

It’s on this outride trying to find the place that Vasco De Gama drew water I had some trouble with my starter relay. We eventually managed to start the 1200 by tow starting it and would be doing so the next 2500km to get her back to Nelspruit.

Things we have to do for our friends

The riding on this outride was awesome nice thick sandy “ twee spoor” and little lanes through villages, exactly what the doctor ordered. We spied some fantastic old villas, unfortunately they were all run down but in their heyday they must have been impressive. One of these buildings has been renovated somewhat and is a restaurant, sadly not open in the off season so we never stopped there on this occasion.

 

As with all good things the time at Ihla had come to an end and we needed to make our way back, we would be following the same route back home as we came up. Again we camped at the mission but this time we would have killed for a shower. By the time we hit the 47km dusty section, that we’d travelled a few days before, it was a running river, the sky opened up just before we got there. The potholes became like little lakes and the clay like butter making this section a real challenge, none the less it was fun and we labeled it a special stage for the day.

WET WET WET

WET WET WET

WET WET WET

The next day we loaded and made our way to Gorongoza with a bit of enthusiasm. The thought of a hot shower and a clean firm warm bed made the 560km fly past and before we new it we were less then a140km from the main gate. It’s here we turned off to ride the gravel road that skirts the boarder of the park. This road saves you a few kilometers as it’s only 90km from there to the park gate and takes you through some wonderful sections of bushveld. The road has some fantastic passes that switch back on themselves passing through small remote villages and exits just north of the Gorongoza village.

Gravel to Goron

Gravel to Goron

Refreshed and clean we made our way to Inhassoro, this time we were spoilt with some fresh fish and calamari steaks and many glasses of Tipo Tinto, the local rum, a fantastic evening if I had to say so myself. Head sore and a bit tired now, we worked our way back to Sunset beach lodge in Chidenguele.

Tropic of Capricorn 

We stayed here again for a full day to recover and rest before the final push to Cape Town. We made it back to the border without incident again taking the 100km dirt road instead of going through Maputo.

 

At this point the group bid their farewells and made there separate ways back to Cape Town.

Almost at the End 

What did I take away from this trip. Well I was expecting a very difficult trip with all the doom and gloom from those that thought they knew what the country was like. Yes we got stopped in road blocks but not to be bribed or harassed instead out of curiosity and interest. People are fantastically friendly and helpful and never did we feel intimidated or uneasy. Instead we were made to feel welcome. Yes at times the language is a barrier but it’s overcome with patients and that willingness to help from the locals. The roads were amazing and fuel was never a problem. The highlight to me was seeing the kids running at a sprint as they heard the bikes coming to wave and watch as we go by. All in all a wonderful country with amazing people and yes I’ll be returning there again soon.