Blogs from Northern, Malawi, Africa - page 5

After two straight days of flying and travelling, I finally arrived at my destination In Lilongwe, Malawi. To get here, I flew to Toronto-London, London-Nairobi , Nairobi -Harare, and then Lilongwe. In Nairobi we were accompanied by the Zimbabwe national soccer team for our flight to Harare. While disembarking our Kenya Airways plane in Malawi, which offered a surprisingly quality and comfortable flight I was glad to finally have the African sun to shine on my face. In line at the airport customs we waited beside the Malawian national soccer team players. At the luggage pick-up, I was not impressed that some Asian food had leaked on my Arc’ Teryx backpack during the flight. We made our way out of the airport with a four vehicle caravan and headed to our accommodations at the Garden court ... read more

REVISED WITH A FEW PICS! Hello All; Well we had a thankfully uneventful, if not quite comfortable, trip back to Blantyre. Mini-buses the whole way. I think we had to change 4 times. One more night in Blantyre, we actually managed to get tickets on the luxury, overnight, bus leaving the next afternoon at 4:30 pm to Mzuzu. We were all excited. These buses are really nice. Comfortable airline style seats, AC, curtains on the windows, etc. Well our excitement didn't last to long into the trip. After we got on there were only about 10 passengers on board. Then we stopped at 3 more bus stations and the seats filled up. That was fine. Then he just kept stopping and more and more people got on board. We actually ended up with 65 seated passengers ... read more

The bus ride to Mzuzu is a scenic one, in particular the part where we chug up some hills near the lake and see a magnificent panorama spread below us. I feel like I'm back in Ethiopia again when, 1.5 hours into the journey and hence with the entire bus on the verge of starvation, we stop for a meal break. I arrive in Mzuzu with no map and just two guesthouse names, one of which no-one has heard of. Fortunately this isn't Tanzania, though, and a random guy offers to take me to my second choice, which he duly does without a fuss. I'm already noticing that Mzuzu is pretty damned cold and have to don two fleeces in the evening. Further guests arrive, a young couple who've just come from Mbeya, where they were ... read more

From the Malawi border, I take a shared taxi to the first proper town, Karonga. I'm squeezed into the back seat with two women, a man, and two children. They're remarkably cheerful at the addition of this large, sweaty foreigner to their vehicle, though one woman's opening comment to me, in lieu of a greeting, is that I should give some money to her child. Later in the journey she tells me I have such soft skin, accompanied by a gratuitous fondle of my upper arm, and I recommend to her Aveeno daily moisturising lotion with natural colloidal oatmeal. My arrival in Malawi now means I have to turn to the Southern Africa section of the WLP, a sign that I am slowly making progress towards my rendezvous with Cape Town at the end of the ... read more

Sorry for the delay, but here at last is my final entry. I'm now back in the UK enjoying the wind and rain. Sorry it's a bit of a long one. It was even longer before i edited it down. I left Nkhata Bay after a day of relaxing and wandering around. Butterfly Lodge had a very relaxed family-feel but the compost toilet was smelly. Travelled north by bus to the lakeside village of Chitimba, via Mzuzu. The bus ride to the lakeshore at Chitimba was hot and cramped but fairly short (only 2.5 hrs) and the scenery was enough of a distraction to take my mind off the discomfort, as we travelled across the plain and dropped down through valleys into the rift valley again. After some misunderstanding due to mispronunciation, i eventually got off ... read more