Top 3 Worst Bus Trips Ever

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At long last, I have a decent travel story. This one involves a hostel that Megan, Dave and I chose on our own, public transportation, modified hitchhiking, and good bars within a safe walking distance.
The tale begins in Lilongwe, where I woke up at 5:30am Friday. We walked to catch a minibus at 6:45am, which, combined with a short walk, got us to the bus depot around 7:15am. The bus depot is a mess. As you scan the lower windshields for a sign that includes your stop, guys approach and ask you where you are going. They then direct you to their company’s bus. This approach helped us to quickly find the right bus, except that bus was clearly full. When we asked the money collector if our ticket was good for a different bus, he explained that because of the fuel crisis, there aren’t as many buses as usual, but that we should rest assured we would get seats in Salima. Yeah…Salima’s two hours away.
The next two hours represented an extended version of taking the 71A or 71C to school either between 7-7:20am or 8-8:30am (for those unfamiliar with this Pittsburgh route, it means that you stand in the aisle, hold onto a bar above your head for extra balance, and switch your position every so often as to not lose circulation in your arms). I found it appropriate that we looked like monkeys as our arms dangled from the bars and our stop was called Monkey Bay. Haha.
All in all, it really wasn’t that bad.
True to what the guy said, we did manage to secure seats in Salima, and though we weren’t in the same row, we each had aisle seats and sat one row apart from each other. Yet the distance was about to feel much greater. As additional passengers boarded in Salima, the situation turned into an OSHA nightmare! It became the 71A or C between 7:20-8am, or better yet, at 5pm when it stops at Thackeray. Other analogies: any Paris or Manhattan bus or subway car at 5pm, or a Shanghai bus coming from the Hongqiao airport after many delayed flights have landed simultaneously. Instead of just one person standing in the aisle between 2 rows, there were now 4-5. I wish I were exaggerating.
While I should have been grateful to have a seat, it turns out that the first 2 hours of the trip were FAR more enjoyable. As the bus initially pulled away, a man with a decent sized gut stood perpendicular to me so that his belly practically rested on top of my shoulder. If you’re picturing this correctly, then you can understand why I was actually grateful that he had a gut. When the movement of the bus and those around him would cause him to sway, his little friend would rub against my arm (that’s as G rated as I can explain the situation). If I knew how to say this in Chichewa, I would have looked up at him and said, “Think of your grandmother.” Fortunately, that situation corrected itself and the crowd pushed him back a little.
The people who took his place would occasionally lean over me for whatever reason or their elbow or hip would press against my shoulder. Good times. By the way, the next “big” stop wasn’t for another 2.5 hours. At one point, I heard a strange squeal. I thought, “If that’s a child, then that’s the most heinous sound I’ve ever heard from a human being.” Turns out it was a chicken. There was a woman in a lovely black and white dress standing next to me. It’s the type of dress I’d wear for an evening of outside dining at a pretty nice place. She had a purple jacket on and carried a black leather handbag. I’m sure it was fake, but all the same, compared with how everyone else looked, I was surprised she was on the bus versus taking a less public mode of transportation. Well wouldn’t you know, the chicken was inside her handbag and was not at all happy to be there. It cried in distress almost the whole way to Monkey Bay.
Megan sat next to a little girl who would take her gum out of her mouth, wrap it around her finger, put it back in her mouth, touch everything, then repeat the whole process. Lovely. Dave sat next to a woman with eyes that seemingly could have popped out of their sockets at any time. He was lucky, though, in that when the guy who sat in the window seat left, the woman allowed Dave to take the window. This meant that he didn’t have to worry about the aisle dwellers pushing against him the whole time.
Our stop was the Cape Maclear turn-off. After leaving the bus, we headed to a petrol station right on the corner. A matola is a truck where people pile into the bed. The only one that came (the guidebook said there would be many) said it had to make a loop in search of fuel, and would be back in a couple hours. Instead of bouncing around that thing for two hours, we opted to wait at the petrol station. Our final destination, Cape Maclear, was only 10km away.
Some guy said he could take us in his taxi, “special hire,” for 15,000 kwacha. That’s just under $100 USD. No thanks. As incredible luck would have it, a 4x4 pulled in. The special hire guy said, “Fat Monkey,” though none of us knew what he was talking about. The white guy who exited the vehicle may not have had 6 pack abs, but he wasn’t fat, and he certainly didn’t look like a monkey. When he came out of the little convenience store, Dave secured us a ride with him. We had been waiting about 20 minutes at the station by this point. After another 20 minutes down the bumpy path with our new friend Geoff, owner of Fat Monkey Lodge in Cape Maclear (it all became clear), we arrived at Mufasa Backpacker’s Lodge. That was shortly after 1:30pm.
See the next post, Almost Paradise, for Act II of the adventure.

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