DAY 8 - Kande Beach, Malawi

Hi there.

 

Seems like ages since i've been on the 'net, but it was only last Tuesday. The connections are pretty temperamental. We stopped somewhere called Mzuzu for lunch and we found an internet cafe there, but no sooner had we sat down and the power to the town went out. The power here only came on at 17:00.

 

We left Zanzibar last Tuesday. The ferry crossing back was pretty rough and many people were ill on the way back. Mostly down their fronts (think of the film Kill Bill vol 1 and the Japanese room). Back in Dar es Salaam we were introduced to the truck we'll be on for the next three weeks. The sides are open to the elements and there are rolldown bits of plastic instead of windows. It's a bit of a Swiss army knife on one side where the stove pulls out and there's a water tank and everyone has a separate locker to put their stuff in. For the rest of the trip we're camping.

 

First night we camped on the beach just outside town, then drove for 11 hours into the interior. We passed through our first national park on the way (i saw my first wild elephants, giraffe and baboons! how exciting!). After camping the night (we discovered in the morning we'd camped on a very large spiders nest) we resumed the drive to a tea plantation and had a guided tour. See pic previously sent. Apparently they sell all the tea in this part of Tanzania as Fair Trade.

 

Friday night we camped in a religious school and had to endure an entire night without a bar. It's funny that most of these campsites can't provide hot water, decent loos or showers, but always seem to have a bar. The place was generally a bit austere in other regards too. The loos were of the hover variety, which isn't much good when half the truck's compliment are suffering the runs.

 

Saturday we crossed over into Malawi. Although it had been the case in Tanzania too, more so in Malawi we were struck by just how friendly the people are. All the kids would run out to the road waving with massive grins on their face, and they didn't even want to sell you anything. The adults were pretty chatty too. Turns out that the roads are very much the focus of the towns and villages. When you look at a map of this part of Africa and see only a few straggly lines, you probably don't realise you're looking at ALL the roads. There are quite a few dirt tracks, but they're not really laid out roads in a European sense.

 

Saturday afternoon and night was spent on the shore of Lake Malawi. It's a fantastic place and looks just like the coast by the sea, except of course the tide never goes out or comes in, and the water is salt-free. We were woken up at five in the morning by banging and shouting. Turns out the locals were sailing in for a morning's fishing so we hung around for the sunrise and had a chat with them. They like to practice their English, you know...

 

The plan for today was to drive in to the mountains and camp the night in the Luwawe forest, but the heavens opened and turned the road into a mud bath, so we diverted back to the lake and this place, Kande Beach. Oh dear. What a shame. Only sand, sun and the lake here. What will we do?

 

Rich.