Charcoal & Wood for Sale Everywhere |
Another ten Trees |
Result - Devestation |
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.
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