Heaven forbid

I thought we’d smashed the early morning record on this trip with 6am flights and dawn safari rides. Not so. A few days ago Wim was narrating terrible days of the recent past where he had to depart Chuilexi at 2am in order to reach overall Niassa Reserve HQ for morning meetings. Heaven forbid, we all cried.

Last night he informed me we were going to have to do the same, as by the end of today we had to arrive in Pemba on the northern Mozambique coast, for an important meeting with all the operators involved in Niassa Reserve. The location is more suitable than the Reserve itself as many people involved in management of Niassa use Pemba as a base, with its more convenient transport links and better supplied shops.

At 2am we departed. Wim’s daughter joined us and said shortly afterwards, ‘I was feeling car sick so I started thinking about horses.’ I enjoyed her tactic, although it didn’t distract the vomit for long. Nor did it detract from questions about remaining distance at 10-minute intervals. This became fairly trying after a few hours of the journey. Other obstacles were the chaotic road-building we encountered at least half of the way, and the driver of the second car in the group starting to experience malarial symptoms and needing to drive at a much reduced pace.

17 hours later we limped into Pemba on the coast and had delicious food with one of Wim’s old friends. We’re being homed for a few days in a beach cabin that I imagine has a delightful setting to be revealed in the morning.

At least the beautiful Niassa landscapes were with us during the morning. These inselbergs become less a feature of the scenery towards the coast of Cabo Delgado Province, so I absorbed them into the memory as we shook and trundled out of Niassa.