Over the Zambezi (and back again)

Tete is on the Zambezi, and has had a bridge since the 1970's - the Portuguese built it to bring in the machinery and materials for the Cahora Bassa dam. The centre of town (where the church is) is on the south-west side of the river, and the airport is on the north-east side. When we were first driven across the bridge we said "we would really like to walk across the bridge". Our hosts seemed to regard this as a rather eccentric English request, but humoured us, so this morning we got our walk.

The Zambezi is wider than the Thames in central London. The bridge is very busy - in the last couple of years a new bridge has been built for heavy trucks a few miles upstream, but city traffic and pedestrians still use the old bridge. Strangely, there seem to be very few boats on the river - especially odd as the reason for the founding of Tete centuries ago was that the Zambezi is navigable from the Indian Ocean up to here.

Our hosts tell us that there are many crocodiles in the river but we didn't see any (but I guess not being seen is part of a croc's job). Apparently that doesn't stop people washing their clothes in the river despite the occasional croc attack.