My birthday, ferry crossings and the ant attack

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Thursday

After a 12-hour truck drive and crossing the boarder from Tanzania to Malawi we have found ourselves at Chitimba beach. For a mere $10 we are staying in the ‘love boat.’ It is a bright red boat complete with port holes and springs to bounce up and down and it sits right on the beach. We are staying on Lake Malawi which is the 8^th biggest lake in the world (it is 300k across.) Arriving slightly early (we have gained an hour by crossing the boarder) and after being crammed up in the truck all day I have just been for a jog on the beach whilst having a friendly local running alongside with me attempting to sell me key rings…After taking a shower which I will describe as invigorating I am now at the bar typing this. We have had no internet over the past few days so keep reading to read my adventures of the last few days



Monday

After spending a wonderful day at Zanzibar relaxing on the beach and having a massage I had a birthday meal with the rest of the group. Tim organized a surprise cake and the waiters came out singing an African song. Afterwards the Dutch members of the group sang happy birthday to me in Dutch and then the Polish in Polish, which was lovely. It was a great evening.



All rested up we caught the ferry back to the mainland the following morning. Taking a travel sickness tablet seemed to have no effect and I spent the next two hours running in and out of the toilet throwing up my stomach lining. Exhausted from probably the worst ferry crossing I have ever experienced we were rushed through arrivals just as I began to feel unbelievably drowsy from the travel sickness tablet.

“We just need to walk 1km from here to our truck – about 5 minutes” our tour guide informed us.

Lifting our heavy backpacks on our back in the midday heat we began walking (I began swaying and luckily Tim was there to avoid me being run over.) 3km later we arrived at a ferry terminal.

“Okay guys…we are just going on a short ferry ride and our truck is on the other side.”

“You have got to be joking!” I said to Tim “I have just spent the last two hours violently throwing up on a ferry and now we are expected to get on another bloody one…where is our truck?”

We boarded the next ferry whilst trying to avoid being run over by cars and motorbikes. More and more people and cars kept coming and coming and coming. I could not understand how so people and vehicles could squash onto one ferry but it happened. I now understand the saying ‘squashed in like sardines.’ We literally were – people sat and stood wherever they could, squashed between cars and motorbikes. Arriving at the shore (the guide was right about the trip being short – thank goodness – no more sickness!) I looked for our truck only to discover we had another 1km walk in the heat with our backpacks (I was feeling very strange by this point with no food or water inside me and also slightly irritated that this 5minute 1km walk was now turning into an expedition.) Finally we saw our truck. I have never been so pleased to see it. We have just arrived at our latest stopover for the night but after a full on day and another 4.30am start tomorrow we have paid extra to be upgraded from a tent to a little hut where I am typing this from a hammock.



Tuesday (6pm)

After a 4.30am wake up call to Islamic prayer chants being blasted from a megaphone it made me realize just how lucky I am to wake up on a Sunday listening to the local church bells ringing at a slightly later time. Back on the road at 5.30am we bumped around driving through a National Park where we spotted many giraffes, zebra, wilder beast, antelope, baboons and my favourite – warthogs (when they run their tails go up in the air – it is so cute.) Arriving at our campsite to spend a night back in a tent we discovered they had a more traditional way of heating water – by lighting a fire under the tank. Unfortunately this didn’t seem to have had much luck and as a result meant cold showers again….



Looking forward to a slightly later wake up call of 8.30am breakfast I snuggled down into my sleeping bag waiting for my epic sleep (if you have been following this blog you will know I have been struggling with exhaustion.) A few hours later I woke feeling like I had something crawling on me. I thought to myself that I must have been imagining things. I then kept falling asleep and then waking up to the tingling sensation. An hour or so later I woke up and I was itching all over. Hearing that Tim was awake I said to him:

“Tim, I feel like I have something crawling all over me.”

“Me too…”

We turned on our torch to find ants. Ants everywhere….all in our hair, on our legs, up our arms, on our faces, in our sleeping bag, all in our bags and the piles of clothes, on the floor and on the walls of the tent. Swarming everywhere…we jumped out the tent and tried to brush off the ants on our bodies and shake them out of our hair. It was like a bad dream, only it was real…Walking around the campsite at 3am we tried to find someone to see if we could find a room to sleep in but the 24hour security guards were also asleep… Removing our sleeping bag and pillows from the tent we painstaking squashed as many ants as we could find. We then attempted to go to sleep in a large store cupboard, as it was the only place we could find to sleep. Unfortunately we were then greeted by lots of friendly mosquitoes trying to bite our faces. We pulled our sleeping bags over our faces to avoid them whilst also squashing the odd ant we had missed crawling up our legs. Eventually we got very hot so Tim got up and after fiddling around with an old fan in the corner of the room we got it to work which helped keep the mosquitoes away…Falling asleep for about an hour covered in ant bites on the concrete floor of a store cupboard I decided that I do not want to sleep in a tent again...

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