When we were in Johannesburg last we had an amazing offer to get a lift to a small north-eastern town called Hazyview by helicopter, and since there are no space for our bicycles to come along Nic and I realized that this would be the perfect opportunity to try something we wanted to experiment with - how easy would it be to arrive somewhere - anywhere - with no mode of transport and a small budget, and find your way back to where we came from, without using motorized transport. We loved the idea of visiting Maputo in Mozambique and cycling back to Johannesburg - similarly to when we visited Maseru in Lesotho earlier - to get a taste of what is happening beyond our borders with cycling culture. After consulting Google Maps we soon realized that Maputo was still very far form Hazyview, but no problem - we wanted to get to Maputo and we would get there somehow. And we did - first in the helicopter, then with a minibus taxi, a lift on the back of a bakkie, in a truck, another taxi and of course by foot (sometimes assisted by a shopping trolly or two!). We had this fantasy of beautiful old Italian racing bikes in various states of disrepair for sale at every second shop, but once we were in Maputo we saw hardly any bicycles, and only one or two bicycle shop selling the cheapest shit you can imagine. I went out that night walking (in my cycling shoes - not recommended) and I spotted a kid on a BMX - Paulo Almeida - and he told me about Betinho's Bikes and that there really was a bit of a cycling scene in Maputo. Thanks to Paulo's late night email directions and a scooter taxi ride the next morning was standing outside the old pink and grey garage in the back yard of an old house on Avenue Kwame Nkrumah - Betinho's Bikes. And there was Bethino too, along with Helio - the head mechanic. Bethino listened to our crazy idea - building up old bicycles into touring bikes and riding them back to Johannesburg, all the while shooting portraits for our Bicycle Portraits project. We had a look at what he had in terms of frames and parts - not much. No Italian racing frame trove as we had dreamed of. We found something in Nic's size - it was an 'Island Style'. It was repainted and rebranded. Island Style. Betinho assured me that they were the only shop where we would find anything in Maputo. Everyone else we met were of similar opinion. After asking for like the tenth time in he had anything - anything - else he remembered an old beat up frame on the roof of the garage. I convinced that to get it down. There it was - a beautiful bright red hand built Cannondale. In my size. I love Cannondales. Sure, it was pretty messed up. The fork was corroded into the frame and bent out of whack. The bottom bracket needed some serious attention and maybe needed re-threading. Pretty bad. But, five days later it was rolling. Mismatched parts and some serious hack jobs later our bikes were ready to tour - complete with racks. All Nic's Island Style needed was a bit of loving care and some adjustment here and there, but no - he had to go and find some old cycle cross tires in the trash next to the shop. And he insisted on fitting this wide tires on his narrow Island Style. We told him many times that it won't work - he would get them to just-just not rub against the frame but as soon as you got on it to ride it would start making that dreaded 'grrrr-grrr' sound as the raised knobs would graze the frame. But he was determined to have his tires and what he believed was going to be the most comfortable ride - so he proceeded to trim the offending tread down with a pair of scissors, block by block! And he got it working perfectly! Ha ha! In the 5 days we spent at Bethino's we met the local cycling scene… Betinho himself is a Mozambican champion, along with Gustavo. Then there was Momade and Mario, always racing. Paulo, who I mentioned before, representing the BMX scene and of course Helio and Isac 'Biopace' Cossa - who both work at the shop. While Helio work with Bethino full time Biopace is more like an apprentice to Betinho. He loves bikes and he has this beautiful Alpina racer, with those oval Shimano Biopace chainrings that were popular in the 1990's. This is where Biopace's nickname comes from. When he arrives, walks into a room - or just whenever - everyone would just go "Biopace!" for no real reason. I think we said "Biopace" about 1000 times while we were there. And he loves his nickname. Biopace was brought up as an orphan and really found a big brother in Betinho. They have a complex relationship and even though Biopace wants nothing more than to work on bicycles at the shop and race, Betinho gave him a long speech one night about the importance of getting an education and encouraged him to study rather than becoming a bicycle mechanic - an opportunity that Betinho missed out on. We made some good friends over the 5 days we spent with them. Good guys. Riders, like us. The time we spent there in Maputo was an incredible adventure. We spent every day working on our bikes, sometimes late into the night - with the most insane rave-remixes blasting on the shop's repeated playlist. When we got hungry we raced to one of the many incredible little restaurants and had fish and chicken and chili and beer, and then raced each other some more around the city. In the days we went tried to make the bikes reliable, and often had to go and search for parts we couldn't make up out of whatever Betinho had lying around. And we even had our seats and handlebars covered in fake leather by a local who normally does car seats and couches! But it was time to go. We were sad to leave Maputo but excited as to what the next part of the adventure might hold. And then of course we wondered if these bikes would take us where we needed to go! We decided to ride down towards Swaziland - to a border town called Namaacha. But we weren't even out of Maputo yet and I had a spectacular flat - a deep gash in my thin racing tyre - these things are not ideal for African conditions… but it got fixed of course - a patch on the tube and one inside the tire sorted that out. A few hours later we were in Namaacha. We stayed at a little place called Paluscha's Place and had our last Mozambican meal - fresh, fresh fish (like every single meal we had in Mozambique) and a prego roll, delicious, with chili. The next morning we crossed one the border. The contrast between Mozambique and Swaziland was incredible - where every stretch of road was lined with industrious folk selling everything from fruit to air conditioners - and every piece of land is farmed and irrigated by hand - in Mozambique, the second you crossed over the border into Swaziland there is nothing going on. You could cycle for 60 kilometers without seeing anyone or anything. Our first night in Swaziland we stayed in Manzini - other than finding a carbon ZIPP concept bike in a local bike shop and the police telling us that it's 'not see to be out after dark' it was a pretty uneventful town. The next day we made our way over the Maluti mountains to a little town called Amsterdam. From the 18 kilometer downhill from the Swaziland / South Africa border post into Amsterdam and further west it just got colder and colder. We froze in the late afternoons as we were shooting our lat portraits of the day in the dusk. I haven't experienced such cold in a long, long time. We were getting some good portraits and having a great time despite the cold but the closer we started getting to what is know as South Africa's 'energy belt' the more dangerous it was becoming for us to be on the road. The criss-cross network of narrow over-utilized roads used by overloaded coal trucks to feed the many power stations that dot the landscape was fast becoming a nightmare we weren't prepared for. So with about 90 kilometers to to go to Johannesburg (where we were aiming to ride to) and after passing through Ermelo, Bethal and Delmas, we decided to not risk our safety to prove a point - we got a ride back to Johannesburg. Initially we felt sad and defeated to some degree. But we soon realized that it was part of the journey, and exactly the kind of challenge that anybody trying to do the same thing might face. So, on any journey, by bicycle or not, you can be faced with dangers and pitfalls, and the right thing to do is of course to make the best possible choice available to you. 

Below you will find some images from our trip and also some portraits of Betinho and some of the people we became friends with on our journey...

-Stan & Nic.