After that was another, longer, hotter bike taxi ride up several hills, with a surprisingly wide lane considering the nearly complete dearth of motorized traffic. The lane was unsealed but in most places pretty smooth, and lined with trees, although the shade they gave was more theoretical than actual. The bike taxi dropped me at the chapa (minibus) stand; while waiting for the chapa to fill and leave I bought some water and crédito for the mcel sim card Kelly had given me.
The road to Cuamba was very wide and smooth. At first I thought it was an unsealed road, and so was very impressed. After some time I started seeing remnants of tarmac and realized this wasn’t an unsealed road, it was an ex-sealed road. Which may explain why the chapa driver could go so fast, slowing down only for large lorries going the opposite direction. Because the road wasn’t sealed, each passing vehicle sent up swells of dust, against which the driver rolled up the windows every time we had to drive through. Traffic was very sparse, which was good because the one time we got stuck behind another vehicle, the air became powdery and metallic with dust and visibility reduced to about 20 feet. The ride wasn’t very visually interesting: the huge, frequent clouds of dust turned all the grass, shrubs, and trees terracotta, rendering it into a mostly uninteresting sepia photograph.
Because of the speed the road allowed, we got to Cuamba fairly quickly once we got going, around 3:30pm. I had left Liwonde at 7am. Cuamba was not exactly what I expected. There were no sealed roads, but the avenues were wide and there was a lot of traffic for a place that felt so village-y. There were buildings with multiple storeys, which, in Malawi only happens in the bigger cities, but the town seemed deserted.
I went to Pensao San Miguel, where the rooms were considerably more than I was expecting to pay (Mt 750), and sort of depressingly basic—the ensuite bathroom made the whole room somewhat moist, and the buckets of water collected in case of water outages and also to flush the toilet provided a very nice breeding ground for mosquitoes. It was also my first experience with what was to become a common experience—cold water only showers. But the staff was very nice and by enlisting 3 or so staff members, one who spoke a bit of English, one who spoke a bit of Spanish, and one who spoke a bit of Chichewa, I was able to communicate pretty well.
When I asked about the train schedule, they were ready to send someone over to inquire for me, and when I said I wanted to go to Hotel Vision 2000, someone walked me over, even though it was just at the end of the block. I went to both places though, as I thought sending people back and forth as I thought of more questions would be sort of mean.
In the end, I found out that the theoretical Cuamba-Nampula flights hadn’t existed for ages, and that, as I suspected and feared, the second-class car for the train had run that day and so wasn’t running the next. I thought about catching the 4am bus (but you have to get there at 3 para sentado bem) to Nampula the next morning, and my friend from the Pensao told me where he was sleeping so I could knock on his door and have him walk me if I decided to go. In the end, I couldn’t make myself commit to a 12-hour-plus bus ride on bad roads and decided to wait until Sunday, when the second class car would run again.
PRACTICAL NOTES FOR TRAVELERS: There’s nowhere to change money in Chiponde. There are a million voraciously enthusiastic moneychangers, wandering the streets, but technically it’s illegal to use them. There also isn’t a nearby ATM to get cash in Mandimba (Although I’m sure one exists, but it’s not on the way to the minibuses to Cuamba.)
The minibus costs about Mt100 or 150, I don’t remember exactly. The bike taxi(s)—if you’re not careful you’ll be hiring a bike taxi only to the border, which is only a couple of km downhill, and will then be hit up for money again at the border to take a bike taxi the 6ish k(or so they say) to the town of Mandimba—you can pay in kwacha or meticais, and in Cuamba there are a million ATMs.
If you do get to the border without meticais, it’s probably better to wait til you’re over the border to change. I paid for my visa in dollars (kwacha not ok) and got change back in mets at a bank rate. I was then offered to change money by several people tooling by my bike taxi on their own, unencumbered bikes.
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