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Published: November 1st 2008
Malawi ended up being one of my favourite African countries so far, although we didn't get off to the best of starts when I realised I'd left the diary that I'd been so diligently writing for the last 5 weeks (albeit usually a week behind but the intention was there....) at the boarder. At the time I was squeezed into a tightly packed minibus on the way from the Zambian boarder to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, and as we'd been the last on we'd ended up with the dreaded rollercoaster back seats which in this particular instance were made worse when a bundle of dried animal skins were loaded into the small luggage space behind us. So I got to spend three long hours morning the loss of my diary whilst bumbing and weaving along potholed roads in a vehicle with next to no suspension, wafer thin padded seats, the putid smell of animal carcas filing my nostrils and the flies that came in with it buzzing round my face. But on the bright side at least none of the other passengers were vomiting this time! Unfortunately I had a bit of a wake up call when we finally pulled
in to Lilongwe minibus station and some dweeb outside slid open the window, reached in and tried to steal my bag... a wack on the arm and he quickly disappeared back into the crowd.
We spent a few days pottering around in Lilongwe not doing tooo much - our one 'must-do' here was the tobacco auction houses but unfortunately the season had just ended and the auctions closed. So having just about recovered from the 3 day epic bus trip that it took to get here from Livingstone we headed off again early one morning, this time going north to Mzuzu on a human sardine factory masquarading as a bus. By 'bus' I mean something more akin to the red London routemaster buses - i.e. super thin hard seats which really aren't, in my mind at least, designed to be sat on for eight continuous hours!!!! And as to the sardine part.... well every seat was occupied by at least one person (children sat on laps and this seemed to be the nursery bus), and sooo many people were in the aisle that if you had the misfortune to be sat on an aisle seat, as we both did,
you either had your head in someones rather odourous armpit or they were leaning so far over you they might as well have been sitting on your lap. One guy was carring a couple of live (i.e. sharp beaks that wanted to peck everything or everyone around them) chickens in carrier bags, a mother a few rows up kept giving her child a bottle of fizzy pop, only for said child to puke up each time about 10 mins after drinking it and another small screaming child sat on the lap next to me insisted on excercising its lungs at full volume without a break for the final 2 hours of the journey. And although it was a hot day and the bus smelt strongly of stale sweat and puke our fellow travellers didn't like having the windows open. Ahh it was fun. Finally we arrived at Mzuzu and after the usual traumas associated with getting money from an ATM (more on that in another blog!) we caught a minibus straight to Nhakata bay.... well, almost straight there - the minibus needed a push start each time it came to a complete stop and seemed to be kept together by
a compination of sticky tape and the conductor holding the door shut!!
By the time we arrived at the hostel in Nhakata Bay we were rather over buses and in need of a cold beer, so spent our first evening in the hostel bar chating to various locals, most of whom claimed to be Rasta's (the village seemed to have more than it's fair share) and all of which wanted to sell us a painting, a boat trip or maybe find some romance. We met King Soloman, King David, the rather aptly named Happy Coconuts and Bomb-X a local 'artist' who was on the look out for a girl-lover, which he informed us is quite different from a girlfriend and it was quite normal to have both. Helen and I have started to develop alter ego's.. we're students from New Zealand, travelling for a month and heading up to meet our aid worker boyfriends in Dar. Being students and from somewhere other than the UK seems to result in us being slightly less ripped off (and we've both been students and lived in NZ at some point so it's not strictly a lie) and the aid worker boyfriends, well
that part was a lie but one that rather effectively deflected any potential girl lover proposals!
Nhakata Bay is a small fishing village on the edge of Lake Malawi and a place where there's not too much to do other than relax. Personally I loved it, perhaps because most things seemed to revolve around locals rather than tourists - OK yes there are hostels here and an internet cafe but it's not yet overrun by tourism. Hidden behind the few streets which form the village centre is a small market, accessed via alleyways between the surrounding shops and with a product range limited to whatever is currently growing on the sellers land or that they've just caught from the lake. Rickety wooden tables crowd together in the dark space, each laden with small pyramids of bright red tomatoes, purple onions or piles of small dried silver fish. By early evening the action has moved to the main street, where women set up 'shop' by the roadside on a sheet they put on the ground - more tomatoes, onions and potatoes (all sorted in equal sized pyramids (trying to buy just one can prove a challenge!), fish caught fresh that
day or others dried and salted. And whatever you eat in the restaurant that evening is determind by what has been on sale in the market that day - if the avocado lady hadn't turned up or it wasn't mushroom season, well you woudn't be having them for dinner. As the night moves on the temporary shops pack up and at least from our hostel up the hill it sounded like one continuous party goes on... with all the noise being made by the locals. Meanwhile out on the moonlit lake the lanterns of the fishermen bob about. Come morning from our balcony we could look down into the perfectly clear water of Lake Malawi, listen to the gentle splashes made as locals canoed passed and watch on whilst black and white kingfishers dived for their breakfast.
We'd spent a few relaxed days in Nhakata Bay when we made one of those random spur of the moment decisions... to go off on another safari. When we first walked into the travel agents we hadn't been looking to book anything particular, so when the guy running the place wasn't around we took it as a sign that it wasn't meant
to be and headed off for dinner instead. 30mins later we were sat at the back of a restaurant well out of sight of any passers-by when a local guy sat down and introduced himself as Davie from the travel agents - I guess there weren't that many tourists in town and asking anyone which way the 2 female mzungu's (i.e. white people) were seen heading had easily led him to us!
And so at 6am the next morning we were loading our bags into a 4x4 and heading off on another safari. Davie left us having breakfast in Mzuzu whilst he went shopping for supplies and we got chatting to Nigel, another customer who it turned out was the director of the trust that manages the two National Parks that we were heading to. A few hours later we were still talking to him but begining to worry that something had happened, which it had - right after leaving us Davie had received a call that his mother had died. He'd been trying to arrange for another guide to come and take over but when he then failed to show Davie decided, despite our alternate suggestions, to continue
on with the tour himself, the plan being that yet another guide would meet us tomorrow to lead the second part.
So we finally headed off to the Nyika plateau, along increasingly narrow, twisting, steeply climbing dusty tracks that took us up through villages, forest and finally to the high plains of the plateu itself. Between the late start, the condition of the roads and a flat tire which took an age, 3 blokes and two teaspoons to change we reached camp much later than planned so headed straight out on an afternoon gamedrive. Unlike other parks we've been to there's not much big game to be seen here, infact we didn't see any at all - but then that's not why we'd come, rather it was for the scenery which really was quite unlike anything we've seen so far. We'd read that Nyika is rather like Scotland - and if you imagine the highlands in a drought then that description actually fits quite well! With most of the park at an altitude of over 2000m temperatures were cool, the scenery alternating between valleys, craggy outcrops and undulating grasslands covered with tiny, delicate, but colouful wild flowers and antelope
munching away on the grass -bushbuck, reedbuck, roans and from a distance the elusive Eland, rare and the largest of all antelope.
Back at camp there was only one other camper - we truely were isolated. The views over the hills infront of us were stunning and we made it back just in time for sunset. By the shower block a ranger was stoking a fire under the water container so here, in the middle of nowhere, we managed a hot shower! Then later on as we sat chatting round the camp fire a 4x4 revved up - it was Nigel who, worried by our late start and knowing the bad condition of the road, had come to check that we'd arrived safely!!
After an early morning walk we were back in the jeep and heading to Vwaza, through more villages, coffee plantations and dusty roads. The difference in the two parks is huge, not least in temperature - at Nyika we'd been piling on clothes whereas at Vwaza the heat was so oppressive that we spent the afternoon in the shade reading and moving as little as possible other than to watch the occasional elephant or troop
of baboons come to drink from the stream infront of us. Vwaza is a lowland marsh and wetland area, dominated by a lake that's surrounded by forest and set against a stunning backdrop of mountains. By 3.30pm it was starting to cool a little and we left on an afternoon game drive.... 5 mins later we pulled into an unused camping area and from behind a rather flimsy looking bamboo screen watched five elephants munching happily on acacia trees just meters away from us! Elephants it seem have poor eyesight (so missed us peering with increasing boldness around the screen), although their sense of smell is fantastic so as we kept the right side of them and the wind the theory was they wouldn't notice us... hmm. We then watched on in awe as a huge herd of over 150 elephants, comprised of both old and the very young, emergered from the tree line 100m along from us and proceeded slowly but quietly to make their way towards and then passed us and off to drink from the waters of the lake.
Our elephant adventures weren't over though - back in the jeep we headed off again, spotting Bushbucks,
Kudu and then suddenly round a corner the path was blocked by a single large elephant who looked none to pleased to see us. This was 'One Tusk', an elephant known to locals and guides alike because having once been shot at by poachers and lost one of his tusks he'd understandably taken a dislike to humans. Since the he'd killed two people, including the local chief! Slowly we reversed back and manouvered under a nearby tree, wound the windows up and proceeded to wait it out as One Tusk moved closer, stamped his feet, flapped his ears, threw dust at us, pushed at the tree... did everything possible to see if we would retaliate - at one point he was literally a few meters away from the back of the jeep and HUGE! This lasted @ 30 mins as we sat, watched and slowly baked inside the vehicle. It was only when One Tusk finally moved away and Davie carefully and quietly got out, went round the the back of the jeep, cheekily smiled at us through the window and proceeded to jump start the vehicle that we realised the only other way we would have gotten out of
there was if One Tusk himself had charged us and provided the necessary push!
Evening yielded yet more elephant encounters, although this time we couldn't actually see them, rather we sat in the darkness listening to the rustling of trees surrounding camp as the elephants moved past, stopping to eat and hopefully being persuaded not to come to close by the fires we'd lit around camp.... apparently elephants don't like fire.....
Next morning we went on a final game drive and watched on as a huge herd of @ 100 buffalo made their way slowly from the lake shores back into the forest. We stood taking pictures of them and they in turn stopped periodically to peer back at us - having decided either that we posed no threat or didn't warrent further interest they then continued on their way. We saw more antelope and pods of hippos wallowing in the shallow waters of the lakes edge before finally heading back to camp for breakfast and a shortened end to our tour - the replacement guide had come down with Malaria and so needing to get back for the funeral Davie dropped us at a road junction from
where we caught a minibus up to the Chitimba road block. As usual the minibus was rammed full, the steep winding roads through the hills causing one poor passenger to throw up (she was then berated continuously by the conductor as he stopped the bus and made her clear it up) and the front windscreen had more cracks than bits of solid glass and seemed to be held together by a rather large lump of centrally placed glue....just hoping that the driver could see more than me! The scenery was stunning though - green hills, small villages and finally views once more of the clear blue waters of Lake Malawi.
We spent our last few days in Malawi chilling out at Chitimba beach on the shores of the lake, debating whether to attempt the climb up to Livingstonia, an old missionary town high in the hills behind us, finally deciding not to after listening to the 'hot, steep, it's a killer' type reports from the guinea pigs that went before us and being amused by the travel tales of a couple of other english guys who turned up, some of the few other independent travellers we've met along the
way!
Next up - Tanzania - spices, trains, more bus adventures and beaches
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