On the road to Ilha...day 4

Our final travel day was finally here!  I mean...no more searching for hotel rooms in the wilderness, hopefully I had learned how to humor police in order to keep Rodger out of jail and the rebels and all the fighting was several hours behind us.

We drove for an hour or so, filled up with gas and headed across the Zambezi river!

For the most part the last day was uneventfull....well up to the last few hours.

We actually made it through all the police stops...we lost count of how many.  As we got closer to Nampula, the road construction forced us to drive on several sections of dirt roads.  We really needed a rest stop, and since we are men...well, we were surrounded by numerous locations from which to choose.  

At this point I do need to add one comment about day 2 and it has to do with "potty stops".  

About 30 or 40 minutes prior to our losing the tire off the trailer and while we were in rebel territory, Mother Nature called my name loud and clear.  In fact, good ole Mother Nature began to scream my name so loud...we had to stop immediately!  I did not get more than 15 feet off the road when I knew I had no choice but to stop, drop and...I am sure you get the picture.  Fortunately there wer only 4 vehicles on the road besides us and we had passed all 4, so my close proximity to the road was of no great concern.   That is except for the fact that this was not going to be a quick stop.  Three of the vehicles, all big trucks, caught up to us and passed us by and finally a Toyota that was having a difficult time of going faster than 4 mph even managed to pass us.  I can still see the woman on the passenger  side of the car holding up her hand beside her face so she could not see me!  

Anyway, back to day 4.  We made our stop and as Rodger walked by the trailer he glanced down at the tires.  The tread on both brand new tires was almost scrubbed off!  We drove another 1 1/2 hours until we got to Nampula to fill up with gas for our last 2 1/2 hour drive, which ended up lasting 5 1/2 hours.

The tire on the left side of the trailer was now showing the steel belt of the tire.  We tried to find a tire shop, but no luck at 5 p.m. on a Sunday night.  

We had one good spare so we changed to worse tire only to now discover the lug nuts had not been fully tightened and that is why the tire wore so rapidly.  We tightened the lug nuts and we were off...for about 10 minutes.   BOOM...our one good tire blew out and bent the fender of the trailer.

God really was looking out for us.  As soon as Rodger got the van and trailer stopped on the shoulder, we were surrounded by 20 kids all wanting to see what we were going to do.  One young boy got us a BIG hammer and Rodger was able to pound the fender away from the tire. Someone else found us a big piece of wood to put between the jack and the trailer to lift it high enough.  

We the discovered the "other" problem.  The nut holding the hub to the wheel had not been sufficiently tightened and that wobble was enough to ruin the tire.  How we made it as far as we did was only by God's protection.

We put the old tire back on and drove the the last 2 hours between 40 and 50 kmh to try and save the tire and limp in to Ilha.   The last 45 minutes of the drive I watched sparks fly off the tire as the steel belt continued to hit the pavement.

Finally at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday night we made to Hotel Escondinho on Ilha de Mocambique!