On the road in Mozambique

When we left the coast in Inhassoro, we knew that the road would get much worse from now on. The N1, the main road going up from Maputo was quite good so far, with just few potholes.

Already after Inhassoro, we had more potholes, then we reached the bridge over the Save River and not much later it got worse and worse. You couldn’t call it a road any more, it was just a mess and every driver was trying to find the best route to get through that. We admired the big trucks, making their way through half a metre deep potholes, or on sloping side tracks, and that for about 70 kms!

We had heard, that there is a route to avoid parts of the N1, taking the turn-off in Chibamo and going via Dombe to Chimoio. The first day, we did 270km from Inhassoro to a mango farm just after the turn-off to Dombe. For these 270kms, we needed 8 hours of constant very concentrated driving, very tiring.

At the mango farm, we could stay for the night and had an interesting chat with Greet. She recommended to ask Chris, a farmer further north for a stop for the next night. We contacted him and were invited to come and stay. Our visit there will be a separate story!

The road between Chibamo and Dombe was a good gravel road and from Dombe to Chimoio, we had a very good tar road. Chimoio is a big town on the route from Maputo/Zimbabwe to the harbour of Beira at the coast. We went to a Shoprite supermarket and the fuel station before we continued north in direction of Tete.

One of the bridges must have some major damage, as there was a bridge on top of the bridge, already a little battered from the heavy trucks – very reassuring. We tried to pass it as quickly as possible.

The road until Tete was not too bad either, some good parts, some road works with deviations and of course many potholes, but nothing compared to the N1. We finally reached Tete and the Kukutana campsite, which Anke and Stefan had recommended to us. Here we will relax for a day, before we will leave Mozambique in direction of Malawi.