After one 30 hour bus ride from Cape Town, South Africa to Maputo, Mozambique, we were so incredibly blessed to stay with an American missionary couple. My teammate, Ashley Bonasso, has family friends that have been missionaries in Maputo for the last 4 ½ years. We needed a place to stay that night before our next bus ride in the morning. God had His hand in it and worked out that we got to sleep in actual beds, take showers, and get real food!! It was incredible. We’ve been so wonderfully blessed by hospitable people on the race so far. People have so graciously opened their homes to us.
The next day, we got a bus (big van) to Beira, Mozambique, a 24 hour bus ride up the eastern coast of the country. Bus rides and transportation are very different in Africa than in the states. There were more people than available seats for most of the ride. The bus driver stops only on his schedule and restrooms are scarce and not westernized. Even though the leaders made a deal with the bus driver that we would be the only people on the bus, they picked up people along the way. When nightfall hit, we decided to watch a movie on a laptop since it was a long way and we got bored. Some friends and I decided to watch Blood Diamond. Bad idea. It just freaked us out as we were traveling on rough roads in the middle of nowhere in the dark in Africa on the sketchiest night of our lives. The bus driver pulled the bus over at 9:30 pm and declared that we were stopping for the night. We later found out that the roads close from 9pm to 4 am to force bus drivers to pull over. It was a dive bar/club in the middle of nowhere. We slept in the hot, mosquito filled bus, some on top, for the night, thinking we are definitely not in Cape Town anymore. No western toilets or any access to plumbing or running water. It was quite the experience. I would say this is the first time I’ve experienced culture shock on the race. Anyway, we left the next morning and arrived at Beira safely after 3 days of traveling. Praise God!
