Blogs from Mount Mulanje, Southern, Malawi, Africa

After three months of sitting on coaches, mini-buses, safari-trucks and on the couch watching soccer games, Malawi was going to provide some great opportunities to get off our butts and do some hiking. We skipped through Lilongwe, Malawi’s rather unexciting capital, staying only long enough to do a spot of shopping. My sunglasses were floating somewhere in the Zambezi, by now no doubt approaching the Indian Ocean, and the last piece of the plastic airline cutlery, which we had been using since our flight to Johannesburg, had finally broken. The sunglasses, cutlery, as well as our broken torch, replaced, we headed south towards Mount Mulanje, which meant a few more hours on another bus. We stopped for a night at a town called Dedza as a warm up exercise and hiked up the local mountain, after ... read more

Full update to follow from one of the group, but in the interim.... Like group A, we also shortened our trek by a day and have come down the mountain a day early, six days proving quite sufficient to satisfy our thirst for adventure! The trek was good fun, if a bit challenging at times, personally I rather enjoyed the 'up' bits but not the descents. I was, however, the exception to the rule and came down this morning like a proper old woman with my walking poles, taking very tentative steps to avoid damaging my rather wobbly knee! Off for a celebratory meal soon and then we will decide how to spend our spare day tomorrow before we head to Liwonde National Park for our safari.... Miss Bennett ... read more

Mulanje The 2nd tallest mountain in Africa (after Kilimanjaro), Malawi’s Mount Mulanje is a site to see. The tallest peaks (3,002 and 2,500 meters above sea level) sit surrounded by a wall of smaller peaks and most days is hidden by the clouds (well when I’ve been during rainy season anyways) and on some days the cloud descends so low that the entire mountain is obscured from view by its shroud. Mulanje town, sitting at base of the mountain and only 30 km from the Mozambique border is an administrative centre and though small (only really the main street) is also bustling with lots of people. It is a main centre for growing tea in Malawi and the estates cover miles in all directions, the tea pickers can be seen in the fields gathering the softer, ... read more

Mulanje, Africa’s third tallest mountain, dominates my backyard. It has never looked the same way twice, depending on how the sun strikes any of its 29 peaks anointing Mulanje as the crown of Malawi. Many of Malawi’s major rivers find their source from springs running down the mountainside, glimmering as if the slopes were carved from diamond. Mulanje sits a mile and a half above sea level, stretching across the horizon for miles like the tread of the Leviathan, each of its peaks butting the sky like its snout. ‘Sapitwa,’ its highest, literally means, ‘Don’t go there’ in Chichewa, and has swallowed the lives of many haughty mountain climbers. All other peaks seem to bow before Sapitwa, for he reigns supreme and merciless, the undisputed king of peaks. To hike to Sapitwa takes three days, stopping ... read more

Hello Everybody! Here's our first Malawi entry. It was quite the trip from Mozambique to Malawi and we were glad to get to Blantyre, which is a big city. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa but it's very friendly and seems more organized than some other countries we've been too. They have a lot of their own exports here; tobacco, tea, coffee, nuts, honey, etc.. But most items have to be imported and are expensive. For example sunscreen ranges in price from $45 to $60 US dollars. Nice accomodation and food is very inexpensive, you can eat a really nice meal for $2.50. We stayed 3 nights in Blantyre and got ready for our Mulanje Mountain trek. The mountains have a series of self-catering huts so we needed to buy a pot, some ... read more