To The Beach

It was time for the annual Leisure Wheels Adventure and, following a round-robin system that may have included some rock, paper and scissors, we decided to head to Mozambique for this year’s edition.

The dates were set, the accommodation and vehicles booked and the guests invited. We were ready to go. Then the floods came and we watched the news in horror as South African Air Force Oryx helicopters saved 60 Mozambicans at a time from a certain drowning or death by crocodile. Fortunately, southern Mozambique remains unaffected by tropical weather throughout the year and it remained unaffected this year, too. So we were good to go.

Well, we thought so, until Oom Cyril decided it was time for a national election, which coincided with the dates of our trip. Now we are all patriotic but the thought of warm beaches and cold beer almost trumped standing in a queue to make our mark. But like good South African citizens, we knew the right thing was to wait and vote. We also didn’t want to stop our guests from doing so, too. With a bit of negotiating and some sweet-talking to airlines and accommodation owners, we managed to postpone our trip by a week

The southern parts of Mozambique are a great place to visit and there’s no need to worry about things like cyclones. Machangulo is a perfect escape from the South African winter. The new tar road from Kosi Bay means you can avoid most of the elements that can make travelling to Mozambique a daunting affair, like road blocks, animals in the road and opportunistic policemen.

The trip from Johannesburg to Maputo can now be easily completed in a day and that is exactly what we did.

THE VEHICLES

Our invited guests were requested to bring along a proper 4×4 with good ground clearance. This resulted in a mixed bag ranging from the little Jimny to the bakkie brigade with the Ranger, Hilux, Amarok, Scorpio and Triton in attendance, to big SUVs like the Isuzu MU-X, Land Rover Discovery and Haval H9. As always, it was a great mix of vehicles, from recently launched models to line-up stalwarts.

TRIP, DAY ONE