southeast Africa: when trips go very very badly

[netllama]

Continuing a periodic series of trip reports from some of the more obscure corners of the planet, I recently returned from spending 18 days self-driving around southeastern Africa in a rented Toyota Hilux (sold as the Tacoma in North America).  Specifically, I flew into Johannesburg, South Africa, drove east through eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland), up Mozambique, across Malawi, and finished in Zambia. 

I'm going to admit up front that this trip absolutely did not go according to plan.  This is what happened barely 6 days into the trip:

ouch 

How did that happen, you may be wondering?  Well, that seemingly harmless bridge was about 3 hours of driving from pavement, on what could generously be referred to as a bush track.  Most of the time, if I was lucky, I could see at least one tire track.  Some of the time, I couldn't see anything resembling a track or road, and the grass had overgrown whatever once constituted a road long, long ago.  The lesson here (one of many) is just because your GPS claims there's a road, doesn't mean its been maintained, or even used, in a long time.  That "road" might cross bodies of water, where a bridge may or may not have ever existed.  Even if there was a bridge, it may not exist any longer.  And even if the bridge is still there, it doesn't mean that the road at either end of the bridge still exists.  In this case, the road was literally washed away at the north end of the bridge, and filled in by plant life, making it seem like the road was still there, until it was too late. I drove into a six foot deep ditch, which I was ill prepared to escape. While this Hilux was fairly well equipped, it did not include a winch, and there was no way to recover at that angle without a winch. 

I spent two hours increasingly desperately attempting different tactics to get myself rescued.  4x4 low, with diff lock disabled and sand ladders got me about a foot out of the hole, but that meant the rear of the vehicle was increasingly less and less grounded, and the edge of the bridge deck was high centering the truck, making it impossible to reverse further:

sigh


For a while, I hoped someone else would come along, and potentially be able to help me.  I tried screaming to attract attention, I held the horn down for minutes, but absolutely no one ever came along.  I had somehow managed to get myself stuck in one of the rare parts of Mozambique that is seemingly uninhabited, and no one else drives this hell road. Plus, since the truck was sitting at such an extreme angle, it was just about impossible to shelter inside, as literally everything that wasn't strapped down was rolling forward (including me).  That roof top tent would have been a great place to shelter, but not at a 45 degree angle where even setting it up was impossible. 

I concluded that if I was going to get help, I had to walk there.  That was the beginning for a 3.5 day ordeal.  I spent the first night sleeping on the ground in a dense forest, where swarms of mosquitoes descended, and it rained off & on for much of the time.  On day two, the "road" led through a swamp, where I waded through knee deep water & mud for nearly an hour. 

that's a road, right? 


I ended up walking nearly 30 miles over the first two days, and eventually got close enough to civilization that I came upon a guy on a motorbike, and paid him to drive me the rest of the way to a real town, with cell phone reception.  After that, it was another 3 hours of different motorbikes and crowded vans (think 23 passengers crammed into the size equivalent of a Dodge Caravan) before I got to the city of Beira, where I started the fun process of trying to find someone who help me recover the vehicle. 

That's when I eventually met the owner of this abomination:

world's scariest tow truck 

That awful Nissan truck (no clue what model it was originally) had nearly bald tires, an overheating engine, and a dying battery.  I spent 15 hours riding in the cab with the driver & his friend, from Beira all the way back to where my Hilux was stuck.  On the paved road, which was often more pothole & crater than road.  Also, did I mention that there was deep sand and a water crossing, and that awful truck was ill prepared for both?

sandy hell river

After watching the two guys cluelessly attempt to drive through this sandy mess for an hour, I eventually convinced them to air down their tires, after which they conquered this portion of the road, and got to the main event, rescuing the Hilux:

halp

They pulled me out, and we then started the drive back to civilization. I reached a camp site just before midnight, about 19 hours after that day started.

I wish I could say this was the end of the badness, but alas no.  While the truck was fine after this point, literally two days later I entered a new hell.  I was now nearly 48 hours behind schedule (after slashing the remainder of the Mozambique itinerary), and needed to enter Malawi soon, or there would be no point in going at all.  On all of my maps (I had 3 different ones), the most efficient way to get to the Malawian border post that I wanted was via a road that supposedly took around 4 hours of driving.  In reality, that road started off as a relatively reasonable dirt road, and gradually degraded into yet another bush track, in far worse condition than anything I had experienced thus far.  There were pits of pudding consistency mud.  There were 3 foot deep ruts that swallowed everything that entered them.  There were small/short concrete "bridges" over seasonal lagoons that had failed long ago, requiring driving through the 8 foot tall reeds and mud to circumvent.  There were multiple sandy water crossings. And then there was the 6 foot deep river whose bridge had failed years ago, and was simply no longer passable by anything that didn't fit into a dug-out canoe. When I reached that bridge, I had been driving for nearly 6 hours, and was about 2 miles from the last road of the day.  Two miles from being less than an hour from the border.  I could not continue, but I was very very afraid to turn back the way I came. 

I searched my maps for an alternative, and found a 110 mile route that seemed viable.  It meant driving east when I wanted to go north & west, but it was better than returning the way I came earlier.  I drove for over 4 hours across more scary water crossings, and past tiny mud hut villages, and eventually onto relatively good condition dirt roads until I reached another river, where the bridge no longer existed.  Ten hours of driving into the day, with maybe 2 hours of day light remaining, and I was once again stopped by a river that no longer had a bridge. 

After chatting with a local in some of the worst Portuguese ever uttered on this planet (yes, Mozambique is a former colony of Portugal, and their official language is Portuguese, English is quite rare), he pointed me to yet another different route back to pavement.  My map claimed there was a shortcut road that would avoid 20km of driving, so I showed that map to the local guy, and he enthusiastically insisted the short cut was viable.  In the dwindling light, I was now driving south (keep in mind the border post was north west).  I had long ago given up any hope of reaching the border that day.  Even if I did make it back to pavement, I had at least 4 hours of pavement driving, and the border closed at sunset (6PM).  The shortcut road was basically just a walking trail between remote farming villages (mud huts, no electricity, very spotty cell coverage at the slowest speeds imaginable).  At this point, it was my only hope, and it seemed like it might just work.  As daylight faded, I was driving in total darkness past random villages and people wandering around in the night, but the distance to the end of the shortcut road was counting down and I had barely 1 mile left. 

Then the road turned evil, as had happened twice already that day.  You see, there was a river between me and the end of the road.  I couldn't see the river (it was dark, plus the forest had grown too dense), but the road had become an insanely steep hill.  With a foot wide, 3 foot deep trench running down one side, from rain erosion.  If any tire fell into that rut, I knew it would be very bad.  But the "sides" of the road were also very steep, meaning that I'd have to drive at a very off camber angle down this hell road.  Picture a road shaped like the letter U, where the most flat, stable part of the road was partly replaced by a trench that would swallow anything that fell into it, and that's what I was attempting to drive, all down hill on wet sand & mud.  Despite my best attempts, I still slid into the trench.  Partially driven by panic and desperation, I managed to reverse out of the trench, while some part of the under carriage of the vehicle scraped against the road surface.  Yet, somehow, I freed myself and managed to continue driving forward down this hill, until a bunch of people walking up the hill (from the river below) stopped staring at me in disbelief and told me "nao ponte, nao ponte" (literally, 'no bridge').  Yup, I shaved a few years off my life and tortured the truck for nothing, as there was no bridge across the river.  Even if I somehow made it the rest of the way down the hill, in the dark, I could not cross the river.  I did all of this, yet again, for nothing.  And now I got to do it again, in reverse, as I couldn't turn around.  I still honestly have no clue how I backed my way up that hill, in the dark, but somehow I did, and then managed to make a 15 point u-turn to drive out of there.  At some point, whether it was trying to drive down, or attempting to reverse back up, I ripped up something (I think its part of the skid plate) under the truck:

oops

Now every time I drove over literally anything that was more than a couple inches tall, it brushed the dangling metal, and made the most horrible sound.  The looks that I got from random people when this happened were truly special.  Additionally, the front bumper and left wheel well was truly wrecked from dragging against all manner of crap.  This needed attention as it was rubbing on the tire, but since I was no where that I could even attempt to fix this, I ignored it as best as I could, and drove onward in the dark. 

I still needed to backtrack this awful "short cut" to the road that would get me to pavement, and it was now 7PM, and I had been driving for 13 hours and was barely any close to the border than when I woke up that morning.  I mentally debated how much longer I wanted to drive, when I knew the border was already closed, and would not re-open until 6AM the next day.  After another 30 minutes of driving in the darkness, I found what looked like a flat clearing beside the road, and pulled over.  Within a minute or two, a small crowd gathered, and by some miracle, one of them spoke nearly flawless English.  Apparently I had parked in front of the village school house, and the (only) teacher spoke English.  I asked permission to camp there that night, and not only did he grant me permission, he even offered to make me dinner and give me a bed to sleep in.  Of course, I very gratefully & politely declined the offer.  I had food, and a tent, and wasn't about to take anything from people who were living in mud huts on pennies/day.  Despite that, I was definitely the best entertainment in the history of this remote village, as 6 or 7 people gave color commentary to my every move that evening.  I setup my tent, made dinner, shared my leftovers with the spectators, and then retreated to my tent for the night.  While it was too dark to get any photos, Google's satellite view actually does capture that exact spot, including the school house, and the speck of road running past it here.  

The next morning, I got up at dawn, packed up, and drove back up the short cut road.  When I reached the intersection of the shortcut road and the "real" (non-shortcut) road, there was the equivalent of a rural strip mall, with a long line of small stalls selling anything & everything you could possibly want when living in this isolated pocket of Mozambique.  I pulled up to a stall that seemed to to be the 'Home Depot', and through the magic of Google Translate, communicated that I wanted to buy metal wire to attempt to put the parts of the truck that were falling off back in place.  The guy didn't have what I wanted, but another stall did, and he chatted with them, they fished around for a minute and offered me a small coil of metal wire for the equivalent of 80 cents.  As soon as I paid, I apparently was also paying for repair services.  The guy and a random other guy went straight to the truck, threaded the wire into place to tie the bumper and wheel well back into place.  These guys were absolute professionals.  It was clear that they knew how to work with metal wire, and this was not the first time they used it to tie stuff into place.  After a few minutes, everything was back in place.  I attempted to pay them for their help, but they refused my money.  I thanked them repeatedly, shook their hands, and off I went.  (Spoiler, the wire that they put in place lasted the rest of the trip).  Another two hours of driving on a not-great, but real road, and I finally made it to pavement.  Another four hours of driving, and I made it to the border that day, more than 2 days behind schedule.

Thankfully, the remainder of the trip was relatively uneventful.  Of course those 6 days of hell effectively wrecked a large chunk of my itinerary.  If you've read this far, congrats!  Here are some photos unrelated to the scary bad roads of rural Mozambique.

First an assortment of roads in varying states:

yes, those guys are getting drunk as we drive through the construction zone

a good road

looked worse than it was

almost a freeway

beware the sand pits

sand sand sand

when your school is truly uphill both ways

the pontoon into North Luangwa NP

bridge drama

i hate mud

pay no attention to that bridge, keep left instead

seems safe

it only gets worse from here

good luck

And now the highlights (!) of the trip:

Vilankulo rainbow

very very old

Bazaruto Archipeligo

Baobab

Klassy hotel, about US$24

Malawian border town

Growing tea

Zambian border, very sleepy

Cotton is king

turn back now

lazy hippos

Dawn on the Luangwa River



If you want to read even more about this trip, I've got an even more detailed trip report posted here.

[Kauri]

Wow. This is probably one of the most fascinating trip reports I've ever read. Thank you for sharing the detailed account of what happened after you encountered the road washout. I'm seriously wondering if you should submit this to a travel magazine.

[trailhound]

This report is seriously crazy. I'll stick to the tour bus.

[TacoLand]

So, before you ask, no ... you can't borrow my truck.

Wild adventure and thanks for sharing. Most importantly, glad you made it out alive. A lot of classic examples here of how people get into a bad situation that keeps getting worse. That combination of poor trip planning (in the form of reliance on unverified maps in an unknown region ... been there, done that), along with stress, lack of sleep, and a pressing "goal" to get somewhere, all resulting in a cascade of bad decisions in continuing to drive down poor/unpassable roads.

I don't know what the correct way of handling all this would have been, and I'm not trying to chastise or be negative towards you, it's more an observation of this is how things go real bad and potentially catastrophic or fatal. Definitely some similarities to reading reports about how people end up dying in Death Valley, making one bad decision after another.

Again though, glad you're okay and sorry that trip didn't turn out remotely how you probably intended.

[netllama]

So, before you ask, no ... you can't borrow my truck.

Wild adventure and thanks for sharing. Most importantly, glad you made it out alive. A lot of classic examples here of how people get into a bad situation that keeps getting worse. That combination of poor trip planning (in the form of reliance on unverified maps in an unknown region ... been there, done that), along with stress, lack of sleep, and a pressing "goal" to get somewhere, all resulting in a cascade of bad decisions in continuing to drive down poor/unpassable roads.

I don't know what the correct way of handling all this would have been, and I'm not trying to chastise or be negative towards you, it's more an observation of this is how things go real bad and potentially catastrophic or fatal. Definitely some similarities to reading reports about how people end up dying in Death Valley, making one bad decision after another.

100% agree, and both during and after all this chaos transpired it occurred to me that this is how bad things happen to people in Death Valley.

[Bluegreen kayak]

I'm so glad you're back safely, and thank you for posting the story and pictures. I'm making my way through the longer version - also well written and illustrated - but I have to take breaks as it's a bit intense. Just amazing.

[netllama]

I'm so glad you're back safely, and thank you for posting the story and pictures. I'm making my way through the longer version - also well written and illustrated - but I have to take breaks as it's a bit intense. Just amazing.

Thanks. I've still not mentally recovered from this experience. Its going to take time.

[DVexile]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you seriously need to alter your planning and decision making processes or someone else is going to have to re-host the forum content yet again - assuming your next of kin have the administrator passwords.

Glad you made it out - hopefully wiser - and thanks so much for sharing the harrowing story! As they say, a wise man doesn’t learn from his mistakes - he learns from others’ mistakes. But that requires folks brave enough to share their mistakes openly. Kudos to you for doing so! I’m only a little way through the more detailed write up and hoping the rest of the trip is a smoother adventure.

[TacoLand]

Had a chance to read the full-blown chronicles of your adventures & madness this morning .... and loved every minute of it. Didn't love it for you, but it really was a good read and following along with your adventures is always a good time (for the reader, not necessarily the traveler).

[netllama]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you seriously need to alter your planning and decision making processes or someone else is going to have to re-host the forum content yet again - assuming your next of kin have the administrator passwords.

Glad you made it out - hopefully wiser - and thanks so much for sharing the harrowing story!  As they say, a wise man doesn’t learn from his mistakes - he learns from others’ mistakes.  But that requires folks brave enough to share their mistakes openly.  Kudos to you for doing so!  I’m only a little way through the more detailed write up and hoping the rest of the trip is a smoother adventure.

My biggest mistake was not turning back when the road conditions didn't match expectations.  Of course, I made other mistakes after that, but at the end of the day, if I had stuck to the (awful, horrific, potholed, cratered) paved roads, none of the problems that I ran into over that 6 day period would have happened. 

In terms of planning better, I honestly don't think that was the issue.  I've yet to find a single map from any source that flagged any of these roads as being in the condition that they were in.  The sad reality, is much of the developing world has not great roads, and their condition is often not documented anywhere until some foreigner with a vehicle drives them.