I arrived in Malawi on Thursday, after only 15 or 16 hours of travelling... The flight was OK but came with the usual problems (Small seats, bad food, TV not working) but this was more than made up for in the flight from Nairobi to Lilongwe where the plane was very empty and so I was able to have 3 seats to myself, and have a proper sleep for a few hours rather than dose off wondering if I was going to fall on the guy on one side and the spectacular views of Kenya’s mountains out of the window. I [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Hey Hey Hey!! Hope you guys are all well! It’s been a little while since I last checked in! I left you in Lilongwe, newlywed! I’ll pick up from there! Married life was great fun, We spent our ‘honeymoon’ eating pizza and ice cream at Mama Mia’s, an absolute gem of an Italian restaurant nestled away behind poinsettia trees in the sleepier districts of Lilongwe’s old town, so well hidden it took us two days to find it. At some point between pizza, powers spirit, hangovers and lazy days in the sun I spotted a poster looking for volunteers. Now, way [View Full Entry]

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I barely got home from Camp GLOW before I had to come right back out of site for a "Strategic Planning" Conference in Blantyre. From Monday, August 17th through Friday August 21st we stayed at the Kabula Hill Lodge. I really loved the Lodge and all of the people running it. They were really sweet and very helpful. The Lodge is nice and well located in my opinion (not too far from the Peace Corps house either) and more affordable than the high-end hotels, but better than a hostel...Okay, so that was my small travel advice. NOW, I gained plenty of [View Full Entry]

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The Lilongwe-Blantyre run is clearly the flagship bus route in all of Africa, as I pay $20 for a journey that's not even 4.5 hours - more noteworthy and incongruous is that the bus has AC and a toilet. For free, we get views of various inselbergs rising out of the green countryside. The landscape here really doesn't end with Lake Malawi. Blantyre is as lacking in cheap accommodation as Lilongwe, and I gravitate to the only place anyone ever mentions - Doogles. The staff are unfriendly and the rooms are poor value for money, but its proximity to the bus [View Full Entry]

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One thing I forget to ask at Infomulanje is how to acquire an (obligatory) guide, and I wonder if I've made a booboo when I start chatting with a guy, B, on the street and agree to use his services. I've read that porters (which I won't need) are allocated on a rotation basis so they get cheesed off if you arrive at the trailhead with one already, and I'm not sure if the same applies to guides. I mention this and B says he's registered so it's not a problem. That isn't quite the question I asked but rephrasing it [View Full Entry]

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I decide that, having done nothing of interest so far in Malawi, I should hit Mt Mulanje on my way out to Mozambique. Mulange isn't a major mountaineering challenge (its highest point is about 3,000m) but its appeal lies in that it's more a massif than a mountain so there are opportunities for merely hiking among its dozen or so peaks as well as climbing them. I'd first heard of Mulanje soon after entering Malawi, when a newspaper article had mentioned the disappearance of a French-Brazilian hiker in the massif. The article had contained an interview with a local headman, who [View Full Entry]

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Mulanje Massif I want to first apologize for taking a couple weeks between blog posts - I’ve been rather busy with work and have failed to get around to writing this post. However, I promise that it is worth the wait. A couple of weeks ago I visited a mountain in Malawi named Mulanje Massif, which rests in the Shire Valley in the southern region of the country. Anyone who has seen/read the Lord of the Rings should recognize the word ‘Shire’ (pronounced Sheer-ah here), and rightly so - Mulanje is where an author named J.R.R. Tolkein became inspired to write [View Full Entry]

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Moni!!! Muli bwanji?? (that’ll be ‘Hello! How are you’? in chechewa... ) Greetings from Monkey bay, Malawi! Hope you guys are all well, apologies to James for the length of the last blog, I’ll try to keep this one down to a lunch hour, snack size! So! It’s been a while again! I left you guys with the cliff-hanger of Zimbabwe... Fortunately, I lived to tell the tale, I’ll begin.... Saying goodbye to George and Naomi was a bit of a killer. I’d lived with them for pretty much every waking hour of that month. I felt a little empty waving [View Full Entry]

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Sorry it has been a while. So, for an update. I went home as a surprise to everyone (except my dad) in May. It was great, and I really enjoyed going around confusing people. I even visited WV and NYC while in the states (apart from NC). It was great, and I ate A LOT. I was worried that when I returned to Malawi I wouldn't be able to adjust back, but it turned out that it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I flew back into Lilongwe just in time to "rest" in the transit house [View Full Entry]

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