Return to Lilongwe

(565km)

S 13º 58’ 70” – E 33º 44’ 81”

I decided not to have breakfast in an effort to get an early start, but this idea quickly came to nought, as I got into a conversation with Peter and Harold, the guys who had spent the night under their tarpaulin, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes… They had spent the previous few days negotiating the roads up on the Nyika Plateau, and showed me photos of some of the roughest roads they had ridden on to get there… Peter had been a pilot in the Royal Air Force, and Harold owned a farm and a lodge near Clarens on the Klein Caledon River. I had not ridden the Golden Gate area near the Lesotho border and accepted his invitation to visit there soon…

While we were chatting, Harold pointed out the huge swarm of flies making its way across the lake from Tanzania… (Those Tanzanians will export anything!!!) Apparently it takes the flies up to a full day to cross the lake, and I didn’t want to be there when they arrived!!

View from my veranda… Note the swarm of flies making its way towards the Malawian Lakeshore….

I hurriedly gulped down a few cups of coffee, while loading the bike and saying goodbye to Harold and Peter, who had decided to stick around for another day to further explore the area… Daf and his crew came out to help me, and admired the bike that “used a ploperrer instead of a chain…” I took a few photos of them standing near the bike, and then with a final wave to all, rode out of the Camp and back onto the M1, bound for Mzuzu…(As if I had not had enough of that darn place…!)

The guys from Ngara… Daf, George and Steve….

I buzzed past the fishing village of Ngara, with literally hundreds of dugouts pulled up onto the beach, while fisherman sorted through their catch of Chambo from the previous night. The place stank to high heaven, and I took a few photos “on the fly” holding my camera up high and clicking away, while keeping an eye on the road ahead….

I was then quickly through Chilumba, hooting at the guys who had sold fuel to Allan the week before, who waved back excitedly as I rode past… I had to brake sharply as I entered the very steep pass at the southern end of the town… I struggled through this section, as I could not use my front brakes too often… The road is a series of s-bends and hairpin turns…and littered with huge potholes, just to make things even more interesting… A line that Allan often used in jest came to mind… “When I was in seminary school, a man put forward the proposition that you could petition the Lord with prayer…” I was ready to start the petition!!

I passed the coal-mining operation adjacent to the road, where large tipper trucks were lined up to collect their loads. A flock of goats were gathered in apparent confusion in the middle of the road a short distance past the mine. I came to a stop amongst them, looking for the ringleader, and finally saw him directly in front of me on the far side of a group of his nannies… I eased the bike through them and gave the throttle a squirt, which took me smartly onto his backside, making him leap into the air in fright… The sight of him scooting off the road, hooves slipping on the tar as he tried to accelerate away, had me shaking with laughter for a few minutes thereafter… Small things amuse…… (Forgot how the rest goes…!)

I crossed the South Rukuru River and went past the bamboo suspension bridge, the guide calling out and waving frantically to me as I went by… I wasn’t having another hour long episode here, and waved back at him as I flew by and into the next corner, out of his clutches…

On the way to Chilumba, I stopped to take a few photos, where the road runs just metres away from the Lake…

The road surface was better now, and I made good time into Mzuzu, flashing through Phwezi and taking the Bogolo River Bridge at full tilt, switching through the gears as I accelerated through a lazy bend and onto the bridge itself. I had developed a confidence in the handling of the fully loaded bike… The ease with which I was able to ride this heavy machine still came as a surprise to me… When I had all the kit off, the bike handled very differently, and I had to get a few kilometres under my belt before I felt as confident as when it was fully loaded… Strange, but true…! I then re-fuelled for the 50^th time since leaving Johannesburg two months ago to the day… I had so far used 764 litres of fuel and travelled 13066 km, an average of 17, 1 km / litre… The boxer motor had run brilliantly, and only sounded a touch ragged in Tanzania, where there was very little unleaded fuel available.

I briefly considered popping into the Mzuzu Sunbird to say hello to all the staff there, but decided in the end that they had probably had more than enough of us…The 220km stretch of road from Mzuzu to Kisangu is by far the best road I had ridden on in Malawi. There are no potholes to speak of along its length as it passes through some of the most beautiful countryside that I had seen so far on this trip. Pine plantations flanked the road for more than 50km past Mzuzu, and an entire informal industry has taken advantage of this resource to turn the discarded “crowns” into firewood, transporting impossibly high loads on their bicycles to places where others chop the small logs into kindling, then load it onto more bicycles for transport to villages far and wide… I was amazed at how they managed to stay on their bicycles with these loads, often tearing down the road at quite a rate, whistling cheerfully, or ringing their bells to warn others to keep out of their way… In addition, they sometimes carried a passenger perched on the handlebars!!

I must admit that I was sorely tempted on many occasions to ride up quietly behind them and then give a blast of my hooter, just to see how they handled their fully-loaded bicycles in times of stress… Maybe next time…

Don’t try this at home…. A “log-transporter” at work in the Mzuzu area…

Timber air-drying alongside the road, Mzuzu to Kisangu….

I noticed that much of the timber here was cut in-field, and then stacked on roadside to air-dry, before being transported to the mills for the final drying process… Piles of sawdust in the clear-felled areas bore testament to this method of “sawmilling”…

Granite outcrop on the road to Kisangu…

I stopped among a range of granite hills and koppies to have a snack and some water. This area deserved to be re-visited in future. I sat listening to birds singing from the thick bush on either side of the road. Only an occasional car broke nature’s melody and disturbed the peace and tranquillity… I lay back in the tall grass on the side of the road, watching the clouds above me float by… I could feel my soul expanding… I closed my eyes and wondered what the crows perched in a tree across the road were thinking…

It was after 1.00pm when I finally got back onto the bike and headed further south, passing through the tobacco and maize fields of the villages of Jenda, Namalula, Chocabanga and Mzimba, before stopping at the BP filling station in Kasungu. I called Peter to let him know I was about two hours away from Lilongwe, drank the rest of my water and then lit a fuse under the “Big Fella”, pointing him south again for the last 150km stretch to the capital…

We crossed the Rusa and Bua Rivers and began encountering more traffic the closer we got to Lilongwe, but not enough to hinder the speed we were travelling at… I had a full tank of gas, and only a short stretch to do, so conserving fuel as I normally did on the longer stints was not necessary… Besides, the bike needed a long fast run to remind it of what it was capable of!!!

I arrived at the Kemps at 5.00pm, tired after the long day, but happy to be back among my friends who had taken such good care of me whilst I stayed with them earlier… Later that evening, Grant and Charmaine joined us for a braai and we sat reminiscing about Allan and his eccentricities… I updated them on the trip since leaving Lilongwe the week before, trying to describe the difficult riding we had to do to eventually get to the Indian Ocean at Dar es Salaam… Grant had very kindly typed out a list of the towns in Mozambique I would need to pass through and where I could expect to get fuel, and we discussed the conditions there in some detail…

The Portuguese Club in Lilongwe, where we had enjoyed supper during my previous visit…

I spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday updating my diary and lounging around the house… I had decided to do the run to Vilanculos in two days, rather than the three I had originally planned. This would give me an extra day to rest in Lilongwe and prepare the bike for “the final frontier”…

It rained hard on Saturday afternoon, but Sunday dawned clear and sunny, and we decided to eat out again at Mama Mia’s in town. Afterwards, we went to Don Brioni’s Bar for a “Farewell Irish Coffee”, and then it was off to bed, to get some sleep. The next day was going to be a “biggie”, over 750km to Chimoio, with a Border crossing thrown in for good measure… I wanted to be ready to leave as early as possible…for a change!!

I lay awake for a long time, the realization that I was on my way home, growing slowly in my mind… I had been on the road for more than nine weeks… What had I achieved? What had changed? What was I going back to?

These and many other questions kept me awake long after midnight…

© 2008 TBMH