Final Journey From Hell?

Sometimes the journey requires its own blog entry.

This is one such journey.

We knew that from Vilankulos to Mozambique Island was going to take a least 2 days. We took the decision to pay a little more to go on Mozamibque's luxury bus company, TCO. This bus company doesn't come to Vilankulos, so you have to get a taxi to meet it on the main road. The ticket said 21.30, so on the advice of the ticket office we arrived at 20.30 (buses don't wait if you're not there). It was dark of course as we waited on the side of the road. We grabbed the attention of several children who were working at what appeared to be their drunken mothers roadside cafe shack. When they weren't playing games together, they were making fun of me and Sean, or chopping veggies or serving (and drinking!) beer to passers by. However, if it wasn't for these children Sean and I would have suffered from pneumonia, for they built us a little camp fire to warm ourselves by as we waited for this bus. And waited. And waited. We kept asking ourselves how long we should wait before we decided we'd missed it and head back to Beach Village, but then realising that we didn't have a taxi number we kinda just had to stick it out.

The bus arrived at 1am a mere 4.5 hours after we had. However, it was warm. And luxurious. And we had the front two seats with masses of leg room. So we fell right to sleep after we waved goodbye to our child saviours.

At 7.30am we pulled into the bus station at Beira. This city isn't really that much to talk about. So we just visited an ATM and a Shoprite supermarket to buy breakfast and lunch stuffs. This was our first time in a supermarket in Mozambique and we were mortified by the cost of everything! Why did they import from Portugal and not from South Africa which surely would be much cheaper? Anyway, we managed to get some tuna and super size bread rolls and left happy.

Our next bus was at 2pm. As soon as we got onto it we realised that this one was a much older model of bus, our seats were behind the toilet bulkhead so were the two seats with the least leg room and to top it all as soon as I opened my cup holder out scurried 7 cockroaches. Nice. We have 16 hours on this bus. Sean was my hero and swapped seats with me so that I didn't have to imagine cockroaches crawling over me in my sleep. Sometimes it's better to be in the dark, for you can't see what is happening around you.

We arrived in Nampula at 6am the next day to the sight of burning fires and tramps peeing against the walls. Needless to say we headed straight to the bus station to leave for Mozambique Island. And that is where our luck turned. For we found a chapa going direct to the island we got the front seats, didn't wait more than two hours to leave and the price was right. They even took us straight to our guest house door. Ok, so that took us another four hours, but out of a whole journey time (including waiting times) of just on 40 hours, it really wasn't a big deal!

And if I'm not mistaken, this is probably our last BigTrip long and crappy journey like this one.

I just love a happy ending, don't you?