One of the many things we shipped out here when we came were our bikes. Zoe and I both have road and mountain bikes here in Mozambique. Here in the capital, the road bike is what we use most of the time and there are some great places to go.

Let’s start with the basics. This is a country with limited infrastructure. There are a few really good tarmac roads out of the city. And the city is all (well nearly all) tarmac roads. But, as with any city riding through the traffic is not that much fun and best avoided. Bikes, apart from among ex-pats and rich locals, aren’t very common here and so there is no biking infrastructure. So unless your really keen and want to zip through at 5 am the city is not the place to go.

There are a few really good roads out of Maputo in a few directions. By us, the best road out is ‘Avenida Marginal’. This is the coast road. It’s a good dual carriageway along the beach. You get great views, a smooth road and it has a hard shoulder so usually a lane to yourself (apart from the odd coconut milk sellers cart and parked car). This is a great place to go from the house for a ‘there and back’ ride as you can turn back at any point. At the moment, with the beach closed due to COVID, you usually get to see flamingos on the beach as you reach the outskirts of the city. If the tide is in they can get quite close.

For a longer ride, we can keep going to Marracuene. From there we can take the N1 back into Maputo. The N1 is “the road” in Mozambique. It runs the length of the country from top to bottom. At the Zambezi, the country is split in two and the N1 provides the only crossing point in the country. Anyway, it’s another well-built road and can take us back into Maputo. On the outskirts of Maputo, there are two choices. Head back onto ‘Marginal’ (the coast road) or continue on the N1. As it gets more into Maputo this gets busier, bumpier and goes through some busy districts. The biking gets quite fun dodging around cars, buses, hand carts, street sellers and more besides. It makes for an interesting ride, but not one that’s going to break too many speed records.
There are many other biking routes around Maputo. The route down to Ponta D’Ouro has a brilliant road (though you must drive over the bridge to the start, riding isn’t allowed). This route does go through the Maputo Special Reserve. Here you may have to contend with elephants, though this is unlikely. You could have great views of the animals (see blog). The Impala and giraffes are more likely to be seen. Elephants tend to stick further into the park. But sometimes the rangers don’t want you to be on that stretch of road.

Heading out towards the E Swatini border takes a bit if driving first to get through Matola, the twin city next to Maputo. But once you finally exit the urban sprawl the drive is worth it as you move into a world different from the sandy planes of the coast. Here the air gets cooler, and hills appear. The Goba border to Eswatini (what used to be Swaziland) is at the top of a ridge. We parked the car about 20km away on the side of the road for a 40km round trip to the border and back. It was a great ride. The hills were a shock after riding in the plains for so long, but the slope is never really steep. It’s more of a gentle meandering route up than a steep slog. As always the birds and scenery are stunning. The scenery all the more so as it’s so different from elsewhere we’ve been to in Mozambique so far. And the ride down was amazing. Down almost the entire way on a pretty good road with almost no traffic. That was a fun route. The only thing that slowed us was the stops for pictures on the way down. There are other border crossings and so with more time, and perhaps more training there are a few routes available going to more crossings. Once the borders re-open then going over the border and heading back via a different crossing becomes a fun trip into Eswatini for the day. But that has to wait for another day.

For those of you that want to keep up with what we’ve been up to on Bikes, you can follow us on Strava.
In the meantime, I’ll keep heading out onto Marginal before work some mornings and enjoying weekend rides around Maputo.