In the land of no cars, the truck drivers are kings.

You see very few regulare cars in Mozambique. Most people walk and those that do have cars need something with a little more oomph, so as to manage the pot holed highways, sandy roads and muddy terrain. Yet the country is big and goods need to be transported, so what you do see is a lot of trucks.

We have reached the end of our cycle tour of Moz. We have cycled about 300km along the coast, and after Inhassoro it was time to make the giddiyup journey inland towards Malawi. We are not cycle purists (or even cyclists for that matter), so we employ a wide definition of 'cycle tour', allowing for a progressive stance on hitch hiking, which allows for catching some lifts with our bikes. In short; we live for the journey, not the bikes.

We discovered quite quickly that the best way to get up country is by hitching lifts on trucks. Most have some extra seats or a bed in the drivers comportment, and the bikes can easily be strapped down in the section between that compartment and the container, or on top, or inside. This is common practice and once you know the hitch hiking hand signals, is really quite easy and costs nothing more than a few bob, a pack of biscuits and a good attitude.

Yet when on board a 100 ton, 20 wheel cargo truck, you are not a passenger or a pedestrian. For that ride you enter the world of the truck drivers. The cargo cowboys, the kings of the road.

Truck drivers are not especially friendly, nor are they especially rude. With a cool mystique and playful arrogance they command the traffic and demand attention as they cruise the narrow and potholed roads, drunk on horsepower and alcohol.

Benson, our first driver of the day, bounced around on his spring seat and downed the stiff drink of gin and Amarula, poured by his aspiring co-pilot. Bad R&B blasts from the distorting speakers. The volume at full blast, the track skipping, but never gets turned down or adjusted. For dropping the volume would mean admitting defeat to the speakers, and this would be against the truck driver code.

Like true motor monarchs of Africa, the truck drivers drive how they want and live by their own set of rules. The lanes are mere guidelines and the traffic is but an obstacle. A line of cars can easily be overtaken by charging full steam on the oncoming lane, over blind corners or hills, knowing with full confidence that no cars are coming their way, colliding and preventing them from delivering their cargo to its rightful destination, almost on time.

The hooter is as much part of the driving process as the breaks or second gear. It warns pedestrians to move or be flattened. It signals to fellow truck drivers in a secret and ancient language known only to those in the business. It is used to flirt with girls or pick up prostitutes late in the day when nearing their final destination.

The brotherhood of the truck driver is strong and the patriarchy and loyalty that exists within the fraternity is sacred. 'Do unto other truck drivers as you would have done unto yourself'. So when our engine suddenly overheated and boiling water and smoke began spluttering over the cracked wind sheild, Benson knew he had to only make the 50km to the next town and he could get help from friends, strangers, or the pitstop crews of truck mechanics bearing tools and welding irons, dressed in ripped t-shirts and no shoes.

But the 'big boys' of the road are still human and there is an air of sensetivity to them. Benson's truck had broken down and we were handed over to Jack to take us the rest of the way. After a big lunch and a few beers, Jack was ready to roll. Like flies on the wall of the presidential palace, we saw what happens inside the private cacooon of the drivers compartment of the 20 wheeler. The slowjams begin. Kenny G, Micheal Bolton, Avril Lavigne, Toni Braxton. The late afternoon drive session of tearing speeds, chicken competitions with oncoming cars and growling engine sounds is but a mask for the Celine Dion signalongs and complex emotions that take place within the driver lair.

This all sounds incredibly dangerous. Is it not safer inside the comfort of a minibus taxi? The minibuses (chapas) are the hyenas of the road. Their small size and unattractive arrogance makes them an annoyance, biting at the ankels of the trucks. They overload their seats, pack too many bags on the roofs and whistel out the windoes to try pull more passengers and show whose boss. They are in it for the money. The faster they can drive and the more passengers they can load, the more money they can make. Thus they drive recklessly and rudely, enjoying annoying their passengers with commercial hip-pop with no bass. And they dont share their biscuits with anyone.They try overtake trucks to show the agility that their small size offers them. But deep down inside, the truth is that all taxi drivers secretly wish they were driving trucks.

Loice was our last lift of the day. He drove a smaller truck carrying empty glass bottles to a depot in Chimmoi (our half way point to Malawi). He picked us up at the crossing at Inchope as the sun was coming down. Nugs and Jules sat on top of the crates of bottles with bikes and bags. I sat inside with Loice, a South African convict in Mozambique on the run from the cops, chewing on tooth picks and hooting at girls. Loice bounced with excitement, knowing he was almost at Chimmoi and he could find a girl for the 'boom boom'. He laughed, danced  and played rhymths on his hooter as we drove through villages and passed prostitutes who he could take to his 'hotel room' in Chimmoi.

See the truck drivers are the cargo kings, the pedestrian presidents. They control when goods arrive and allow you to walk where they are not driving. They drive where they want, fuck who they want, break laws as they please and exploit the privileges of the horsepower given to them. They are like the lions in the jungles, the killer whales of the oceans and the politicians in the autocracies in which they live. For in the land of no cars, the truck drivers are kings.