We left Swaziland on a Thursday morning and began the ride to Mozambique. Split between three vans, we would cross the border, travel to Maputo (the capital city) together, and then split off from there.
It took about 8 hours to get to the border and through customs, at which it took a good 10 tries for me to get my fingerprints scanned. We drove until fairly late at night and had been going for 12 hours or so when we dropped off one team and continued on.
Here’s the thing about travel day: unlike your typical road trip, food stops aren’t really a thing. Each team had a bag of sandwiches, fruit, and whatever else we’d taken from the squad food supply, but that didn’t last long. After that, we would pull into a gas station every once in a while, wait in a long line for a questionable bathroom, and load up on junk food if there was a convenience store. It was quite the ordeal, but since we didn’t know when or where we would stop next, you had to go for it.
We drove through the night, but not without getting stopped countless times by Mozambican police telling us we couldn’t drive at night. Oops. The trek continued the next morning, and at some point one of the other teams was left with their ministry hosts.
I was quickly learning that driving in Mozambique has a few unconventional hazards that you don’t get back home. At one point we hit a sheep… no, I think a better wording would be that we annihilated a sheep. On the subject of ambient fauna, we saw maybe 15 goats on top of a single truck. Welcome to Africa.
We kept driving, stopped at other sketchy gas stations, and drove some more. It got dark once again as we approached almost 36 hours of travel (and we had been given the estimate of 18 total, but at this point we weren’t even close). So we stopped at a grocery store somewhere around 8:00 and all swarmed in, much to the amusement of locals. Team leaders bought food, and we stocked up on more snacks for the ride, including some apricot yogurt that tasted, according to my squadmate Katie, “like a nail salon smells.”
It was late at night once again, and we didn’t want to drive through the night after our previous experience, so our logistics coordinators contacted someone nearby with whom AIM was connected. Two more teams were picked up by their hosts and the remaining four were left to spend the night at this stranger’s house. All of the guys and a handful of girls slept in the vans, while the rest of us piled into the living room, sleeping wall-to-wall like sardines in a can. At one point I was on top of one squadmate, and another was trying to snuggle with me.
So 6:00 am rolled around and we were on the road. Two more teams reached their location and it was only 14 of us left. There were no bathroom stops this time around, so we had to get creative. Multiple people took the “behind a tree” approach and others chose not to leave the van and use a Pringles can instead. Gross? Yes. Necessary? Apparently so. Somewhere around this point Katie and Kelsey learned that I had never peed in the woods before, so they decided to give me a tutorial. When I used a squatty potty for the first time later that day, their advice proved to be invaluable.
It wasn’t over just yet. Since our van was from Swaziland, we were stopped once again and told we needed to pay $250 USD to continue on. We were there for a good hour or two, and even called the US embassy to make sure this wasn’t just a bribe. Turns out it was legit, and we had to pay in order to get to our final destination
Finally, after 54 hours, we arrived at our ministry site. For a little perspective, it took us longer to get from Swaziland to Mozambique than it did to get from Georgia to South Africa. On the plus side, every other travel day will seem short compared to this. Maybe.
After all, this is the World Race!
