The road from Pebane back to Kwa-Zulu Natal is long. The roads are poorly maintained with enough pot-holes to kill a normal rim in an hour. Lucky for us, in our big-manned Land Cruiser (vehicle of Africa) we only had rattled bellies and brains, but the vehicle was fine! We traveled from Pebane to Inchope the first night. From there we drove solidly to Vilankulos and then on to Praia de Tofo (near Inhambane). Our last long drive was to Maputo and from there back to Pongola. All in all, 5.5 days of driving, sleeping, and swimming.
We saw stacks of people all the way down -- there is nothing such as the "wilderness" in Africa, truly there are people everywhere. My photos are poor because of the road conditions & my difficulty to focus through the windscreen. However, take them for what they're worth! The last two photos I co-opted from another website, as I ran out of camera battery 1/2 way down!
I took notes on the drive down. They are as follows:
Pebane to Inchope:
* crippled man with a rock tied to his write to keep spasms in his hand still; big smile on his face; always walks up and down the road, the happiest guy, Johannes says
* kids selling live chickens - holding legs, flapping wings, struggling for freedom whilst being held out over the road.
* bikes laden, used as modern day wheelbarrows with racks full of: pineapples, sacks of charcoal, sides flanked with wooden planks
* African women walking an extra head tall with the following atop: sticks, sacks of maizemeal, bundles of mandioca/cassava - wrapped in patterned cloth, bundles of firewood, plastic jugs of water, plastic bins with fresh laundry (washed in the river)
* bikes with 2 or 3 passengers, often a mamma with child side-saddled on the back.
* streets littered with rows of children, girls in dresses -- no uniforms here, too poor, tattered school books carried in one hand; can see that there aren't enough schools in rural areas by the #s of children you see during the school day.
driving to Maputo from Praia de Tofo:
* baobab groves, magical; planted fields where they've left the large trees to stand in the middle; towns that have grown up around the baobabs, much like in that new film Avatar
* goats & rooster tied to wood-laden trick, cowering as nestled close to wood, bodies quivering/trapped.
* old school buses over-loaded, sometimes almost twice as tall with loads of luggage & coconuts mounted in bundles on top. major safety hazard!
* Johannes speaking Portuguese, feels like a remarkably familiar language because of my French/Spanish: mar, por favor, senora, etc.
* for sale on the sides of the roads, north to south: reed mats, baskets all shapes and sizes, charcoal, honey, diesel, coconuts + scraper tools, fabric, clay pots + urns + bowls, guavas, traditional beer, maize mortar & pestles made from large wood pieces, cashew nuts being flown from trees in clear plastic bags, charcoal burners, chickens live, exotic birds, thatch chicken houses -cute, wooden planks, reed bundles, hats, wooden sculpted fish, doors, chairs, stick bundles for building, live goats, metal buckets, concrete tiles with holes to be used as windows, second-hand clothes
* Maputo - throngs of people; markets, ladies sitting with spreads of lemons & tomatoes on blankets and what looks like collard greens -- me sitting on the back of bakkie to protect our worldly goods from quick-handed theft
* mosques up north; old-style Portuguese churches in south
* prawns, prawns, prawns
* women becoming more modern as we drive south, some with jeans and fancy hairstyles & contemporary fashions; compared to north where they wear traditional patterned cloth, often 3 pieces, one wrap for skirt, one wrap for torso, one wrap for head.
* fabric traditional women wear changes as we go south, too -- less of the blue/green/white/black patterns from Malawi; more 2-toned plaids
Images from Vilankulos & Praia de Tofo will be removed at the request of the owners:
http://mocambique3.blogs.sapo.pt/arquivo/VILANKULOS%20-%20vista%203_resize.jpg
http://macua.blogs.com/photos/turismo/tofo1.jpg
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