Day 46 – Monkey Bay to Ugezi Tiger Lodge on the Cahora Bassa Dam

Charcoal & Wood for Sale everywhere

More trees cut down

Result - Power lines on the other side of the road  

We get an early start and after a full breakfast we are on our way at 07h00am. Our route today on the advice of our hosts is to cross the border at Dedza and go down to Tete and even with the need to get a Visa for Sinead we were through there in less than an hour. It was Sinead’s turn to have a wobbly at the border and so out of character, we put it down to tiredness, but it is so out of what we have come to expect from her that we give her some paediatric Panado just in case it is something else

  

Although there is a lot of trucks at the border there are very few on the road so we make good time until we reach our intersection with the M6 16kms West of Zobue on the Tete to Blantyre road. We had be warned of the state of this road and although the descriptions were a little exaggerated like “watch for the other 4x4 coming up out of the pot holes” or “they are so deep you could meet up with a donkey at the bottom and he will be standing up” well they were deep, but I have to say we had seen worse on this trip and at least there is an effort to repair in progress, you do have to virtually stop and ease your self into the hole and the ease your self out the other side.

We had over 80kms of this intermittent pot holed road, which is a problem on its own as you cannot relax your concentration for a second. We see some huge activity around Moatize and Tete with some massive coal mining projects on the go and there are a number of South African companies doing business there amongst which are Group 5, WBHO, and a number of mining service companies. They say that in 5 years Tete will be as big as Witbank.

The suspension bridge over the Zambezi at Tete is really impressive and the city has clearly outgrown any maps we have of this once sleepy town, we were told it is a bit like the Wild West. We change some money have some lunch and hit the road again and at least the road is good, we turn off after 22kms heading North West for Songa and the Cahora Bassa Dam, pleasantly surprised by the good tar road so we make good time still not knowing what the speed limit is. The Roadside is sparsely populated with the odd village dotting the landscape, it is very dry and more like the bushveld of the Limpopo.

The devastation from the cutting down trees for either firewood or charcoal is very apparent all over Africa, but none so bad as Mozambique and there you have the Cahora Bassa power grid travelling over this raped land.

We finally get to the Ugezi Tiger Lodge at 03h45pm after some nearly 9 hours on the road. We check out our rooms in 37°c and are relieved to find that it is air conditioned, we go up to the pool only to find it is empty, but it was being cleaned and they started to fill it and at least Sinead could cool down. The first two Laurentina’s went down without touching the side and came out in perspiration as fast as it went in.