www.strava.com/activities/18136832021

I was on the lookout for a novel bike tour, and when I saw there were roundtrip tickets to Mozambique for under $400, I knew Southern Africa had to be the destination. I even had several hundred dollars in local currencies that I had failed to change to dollars after selling a motorcycle many years before.

Upon arriving in Maputo, I looked through Facebook Marketplace for a bike to carry me across four countries. Finding few appealing options, I checked to see whether one of the many charities that sends shipping containers full of donated bikes to African villages had an office nearby. I contacted Mozambikes, thinking they were one such charity.

A team member from Mozambikes quickly replied, but informed me that rather than import bikes, they manufactured their own. They had only one model, which happened to be a single-speed mountain bike, well-suited to the flat, sandy villages that fill the country. He would be happy to loan me such a bike for my trip, as long as I could take some pictures and help to promote the brand. Despite a fair bit of apprehension with regards to the suitability of such a bike for what would surely be a rather mountainous route, I agreed to this arrangement..


The Mozambike

My loaner bike was fresh off the assembly line and in perfect condition. And I’d been supplied with spares, a patch kit, and every tool I imagined I might need. But it was a single-speed and ill-equipped to chug up any of the inclines that lay before me. I found myself standing up and shifting my weight from side-to-side to make it up many of the hills enroute. Any reasonably intense grades and most unpaved hills quickly turned to hike-a-bikes. Inevitably, the chain got stretched out, and by the end of the trip, I found myself jumping off ten times a day to place it back on the sprocket. The only other mechanicals were flat tires, likely caused by the abundance of broken beer bottles that littered the roadsides.


The Roads

South Africa has lots of roads. Some are paved and empty, others are smooth dirt, still others have no shoulder and frequent semis going 80mph, and there’s certainly plenty of washboard, mud, rocks, and river crossings. I did not piece together the perfect route. With enough time spent on Google Street View, you could likely achieve some level of confidence as to the quality of a given sequence. But food and lodging are limited, weather can wreck gravel, and drivers are typically awful at slowing down or giving you any extra space. Picking out something that will be consistently comfortable and fast is a serious challenge. But there’s certainly plenty of potential.

Mozambique has a few well-paved, empty roads, a few very busy roads, and plenty of deep sand. It’s also exceptionally hot.

Eswatini only has a few roads, so the options for getting away from traffic are limited. But the drivers are a little less crazy here.

Lesotho has one main road with a sane elevation profile but way too much traffic. The others are either ridiculously steep or of unpredictable quality. With more gears, better weather, and lots of time, I might have delved deeper into the center of the country.


Race

South African race dynamics are extremely messy and ubiquitous, and will influence your every interaction. Each 5-minute conversation with a white South African will inevitably bring up a discussion of their nuanced views on the topic. And every visit to a black-owned business elicits strong “why are you here?” vibes. In black settlements, things are more reminiscent of other parts of Africa, where everyone just treats you like some kind of crazy alien that just dropped down from space.


Food

While Google Maps and Afrikaners tended not to admit to their existence, there were fast food restaurants and tuck shops in every town that offered ready-to-eat stews for $2-3 during normal lunch hours. These could be chicken, beef, or tripe, and were usually accompanied by a mountain of rice or paap (corn mush) and various veggies. There were also sporadic Ethiopian restaurants that seemed intentionally hidden, and endless well-advertised opportunities for fried chicken, sausages, and absurdly large sandwiches.

All the stew shops close down before the evening, so I’m not sure what everyone does for dinner. Even the smallest towns have like six grocery stores, so I would typically pick up something microwaveable from one of those.

The tap water was sometimes potable, and sometimes an innkeeper would tell me it was, even though it was slimy or reeked of bleach. I would usually just buy a 5L jug for $1.25 and make like 15 cups of coffee using the ubiquitous electric kettle.


Safety

I made a point of giving a wide berth to any larger South African cities, but even the smaller towns seemed quite sketchy. Each of the white settlements had beautiful neighborhoods with European architecture and tree-lined streets, but every downtown would be completely overrun with the squalor of poverty, low employment, and lawlessness. In Bethlehem, I was tackled from behind by a random homeless guy, and ended up with some road rash and broken sunglasses. I felt safer in the countryside, but even in the middle of nowhere, tuck shops would be housed in heavily-fortified cages.
Mozambique, Eswatini, and Lesotho seemed mostly fine. The Maputo police like to harass tourists and extract bribes.


Sleeping

Almost everywhere I stayed on this trip was ridiculously nice and came in around $30/night. Nearly every guesthouse had multiple rooms with a kitchen (or least a kettle) and a minimum of six pillows. Everyone was keen to have me wheel my mud-covered bike through their pristine rooms. Many white South Africans talked my ear off and lavished me with free food - one older couple on a game ranch gave me a full luxury chalet with two giant meals and a tour, and then refused to take any payment. Other proprietors were largely indifferent.


Weather

Other than a few days of 90-degree weather in Mozambique, the temps were rather perfect. I never needed a coat or gloves, and it was rarely too hot or sunny. Many of the trees had just reached their peak autumn colors, which proved delightful. I got several days of light rain and mist, as well as a few nights of heavy downpours, which inconveniently turned all the dirt roads to mud.


Borders

Aside from a $10 visa-on-arrival for Mozambique and a full bag search from the Mozambican border guards, all the crossings were free and easy. Eswatini and Lesotho will both accept Rand but give change in their local currencies, so you have to get rid of those extra bills before returning to South Africa. Every country has different phone networks (often under the same companies), so I needed four different sim cards.

In the intervening years since my last trip, the South African currency had changed. So while my ancient bills were almost certainly legal tender, they were foreign to nearly everyone, and most refused to accept them. Thus, I boarded my plane in Maputo with 1000 Rand – and the fervent hope that South Africa’s economy would fare better in the next decade than it had in the previous.