Mozambique Part 7 - The Long Road Home

Pictures are here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/116486261622853021292/SATrip2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCLL_gbqGtdC63wE#

We are exhausted - maybe it's the anemia caused by the malaria pills, compounded by the lack of protein. Maybe it's the heat. But we decided that venturing into Zimbabwe would be pushing things. This means having to retrace our route southward (there is only one highway, right?). Well almost: there were other routes west into the northern reaches of South Africa and thus into Kruger National Park. Unfortunately, some of those routes end with a river-crossing of the Limpopo River. Many a truck (finer than ours) has been eaten by the Limpopo. But there was one route that, although longer, passed through Mozambique's recently created Limpopo National Park and it allowed us to avoid the chaos of Maputo.

We started our inland push before sunrise, packing our tent in the morning mist at Zavora (campground was a run-down dump) and driving south through Xai-Xai to Macia before winding our way into the interior of the country. It was hours of tedious driving with nothing but bush lining the road. But one should never whine - because the the road between Macarretane and Massingir ( the park entrance) was so bad that the detours around the rough patches slowly slogged through the very bush we were tired of staring at!

Limpopo is a very new park - the buildings were brand new and beautifully designed and they haven't sorted some of the details out, like what to do with the pastoral cattle herding villages within the boundaries. There are no animals to speak off (we didn't see any) but followed the meandering road through small villages and delicate kraals made of thorny acacia branches stacked vertically.

We spent one night in the park - treating ourselves to a tent chalet. We followed a road that at times resembled a creekbed, jerking noisily out of the bush as branches snapped on our roof rack. Things are so quiet here that the Park Ranger in charge of the chalets actually looked surprised when we arrived! We had a simple diner that evening overlooking the massive and completely calm Massingir reservoir. Mozambique is real Africa: real rough, real surprising, and real beautiful.