30-31 Aug 2019: Into Malawi

We stocked up on supplies and diesel at Chimoio before turning off the main Beira road to Tete. The road north to Malawi was the usual extremely good tar roads mixed up with endless kilometres of potholed tarmac skilfully disguised as a national road. Oncoming trucks or pedestrians sometimes made it difficult to dodge all the potholes and Daai Dêng made intimate acquaintance with these Mozambique ambushes. This just again underlined the fact that time on the road in Africa is determined by road conditions, and not by distance. Tete was only reached at dusk and we camped at a local hotel; Maans complaining bitterly that he had to pitch his tent on the gravel of the parking lot.

Maans Booysen

The next morning we battled the rush-hour traffic of Tete, just to find that my devious GPS with the seductive female voice had led us down the wrong path to a bridge over the river that had washed away ages ago. This meant a backtrack and deviation of about 30 km to where we crossed the Zambezi River over New Bridge, a fact that my GPS conveniently only remembered when we were approaching the bridge. Tip – never buy a female GPS. The rest of the road to the Malawi was a joy to travel, and we crossed into Malawi with a minimum of pain at the border posts. A quick birding stopover at the Shire River delivered Brown-headed Parrot, Blue Waxbill, Tawny-flanked Prinia, Bronze Mannikin, Yellow-throated Petronia and Violet-backed Starling, but no new candidates for the year list. The evening we camped at a church campsite in Blantyre where I was astounded to see a group of youths receiving drill instruction – supposedly to make them better soldiers of God.