A late departure today saw us setting off at 8am. We only had a 4ish hour drive up the shore of Lake Malawi. Along the way we stopped off in a small town and visited the market with an objective: we'd each drawn someone else's name out of a hat and were buying them an outfit for our 'superheroes' fancy dress party. Gemma bought a leopard skin ensemble for a Junglewoman outfit, and Ed went for an English superhero called 'Super 118' once he had found a stall selling shellsuits and a man flogging a pink headband. The final part of [View Full Entry]

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Not much rain today and in fact we even saw the sun at one point. With 2 consecutive nights in the same campsite we were able to do some laundry, barter to our hearts content in the market and most importantly of all watch sport on TV. Laundry was made easier by one guy breaking with the established cartel (500 kwatcha) and charging 200 kwatcha for a bag. He ended up a busy man. The market was a bit of fun but without much there. One person taught us how to play a game called 'Bao Game' - and even let [View Full Entry]

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An early start today, and we're beginning to wish that these blog entries could be set-up as a template with the first 4 words filled in. Yesterday just outside the campsite our truck driver, Alois, had helped a car that was stuck in the mud. Well, one good turn deserves another and it turned out that the stranded driver was the immigration officer at the border. Normally immigration is a right pain, but today we just sailed through in double quick time. We stopped in Lilongwe, Malawi's capital, to get a new pane of glass fitted on the truck. Here we [View Full Entry]

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Another early start, up at 5am for a 10 hour drive. And to make things worse, yesterday a stone had shattered one of the windows at the front of the passenger compartment on the truck. A few minutes later the wind blew it out (well, in) covering the seats in glass and meaning it now rained inside. So our first stop was in a little town to find some wood to fix it. So many strange things happened here it's impossible to recount them all, but we watched a vagrant-looking chap carrying a bundle of burning litter before setting up an [View Full Entry]

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Our first task today was to secure a partial refund. It got off to a bad start when we found that the houseboat owner was in a 'council meeting' and so we had to deal with his wife but, of course, as it was not her company she could not pay any refund. She did promise that once her husband was back they'd arrange appropriate compensation to be paid in Nairobi. We won't hold our breath and are not very happy with all this, the latest of several instances of us getting terrible value for money whilst the tour company no [View Full Entry]

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We felt pretty awful this morning after our nightmare with the waterlogged room and bed. Our tour leader, Emma, called the owner of the house boat company and he said he'd be there the next day when we got back to discuss. We moved locations but didn't really see any interesting wildlife and passed the day reading and playing cards. For some reason we were running low on food so a couple of people headed out in the tender boat and asked some fishermen for 10 kilos of fresh fish. Everything they had was drying in the sun but they said [View Full Entry]

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We were pleased to leave Zimbabwe and in fact leaving it is a genuine highlight - crossing the Vic Falls bridge into Zambia. We had a 6 hour drive to Lake Kariba where we are spending 2 nights aboard a houseboat. The boat only has 2 double rooms so we had to draw lots for them. Luckily, or so we thought at the time, Gemma picked one out of the hat. We chugged along over to the other side of the lake, stopping off in deep water (well away from hippos and crocs) for some surprisingly scary jumping off the boat's [View Full Entry]

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Today's activity was a spot of whitewater rafting on the mighty Zambezi. The setting was great, with the river winding its course along a 200m deep gorge of very black basalt rock. The rafting itself was fun, but nothing like as much fun as a few months ago in Ecuador in large part down to a boring guide. We'd ask him to steer a slightly rougher course through the rapids and he'd refuse, saying we might fall out (which is really the whole point of whitewater rafting). In some parts we were happy with his advice not to fall out as [View Full Entry]

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This morning we walked the 20-odd minutes to the Victoria Falls themselves, one of the wonders of the natural world. They are quite some sight, and definitely up there with the best things we've ever seen. But for what it's worth, Iguazu Falls on the Argentina/Brazil border just about edges it. We walked along the path opposite the falls, taking it all in and getting throughly drenched. Eventually we made it back into the town, past people trying to sell us waterproof ponchos even though we were walking away from the falls, and went to the market. This was quite an [View Full Entry]

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Today was a double celebration - Gemma's dad's 60th birthday and (our first ever celebration of...) Australia Day. There's a sizable Aussie contingent on our truck and they had plans to dress up in green and gold, so we entered into the spirit of things by kitting ourselves out in convict uniforms, complete wih ball and chain and hats with corks. We got a few stares at the border crossing into Zimbabwe but weren't (re)-arrested. The border crossing was a little painful - and all unnecessarily. The official (who looked half asleep) was stamping our visas with the wrong date, which [View Full Entry]

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