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Published: November 13th 2009
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Well it has been a while since we have updated our blog we are getting a little behind. We have now driven across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean at Walvis Bay, Namibia, to the Indian ocean at Inhassoro, Mozambique. We are sat in a campsite at Inhassoro which it just over half way down the coast drinking a cup of tea, how very English of us, and yes it is tetleys brought all the way from England (it is a little early for wine time). But before we get to Mozambique we have missed out a country, Malawi….
We arrived in Malawi and drove to the capital, Lilongwe. We stayed there a couple of nights. It is the nicest capital we have been to so far. Not the biggest and it is still obviously very underdeveloped like all the other capitals in Africa but it is very clean and has a really nice atmosphere to it. Lots of market stalls, selling all sorts from fruit and veg, to mobile phone top up vouchers.
There are similarities to Zambia, the bikes are still going strong and again you see lots more villages and people compared to Botswana and Namibia. After
Lilongwe we headed up the coast of Lake Malawi to Senga Bay. There we had our first glimpse of Lake Malawi, it was hard to believe that it is a lake as it is so vast, it looked like a calm sea. At Senga Bay the campsite was situated next to the beach with a fence between the campsite loungers and the beach, which is to separate you from the locals! Which is quite handy in some respects as you do get a little fed up of the touts but we also spent some time ‘on the other side’ watching the locals go about their daily lives. The lake is obviously fresh water therefore the locals lives are centred around it, as it is suitable for bathing, washing pots and clothes, a source of food, drinking and just having fun, three back flips seems to be the local way to enter the water! The food was amazing here, some of the best fish we have ever tasted.
After Senga we headed a few hours further south to Cape McLear. Here we did an overnight kayak trip to Dumo Island. The island is situated 5 km offshore. After a 45
minute kayak we arrived at a secluded little beach in a beautiful bay with crystal clear water surrounded by huge rocks that were perfect for jumping into the water of.
The camp itself had a real Robinson Crusoe feel about it with open kitchen and dinning areas set amongst the rocks and trees all staged on the hill so it gave you a feeling of isolation. You could stay in a large safari tent with a proper bed or rent a sleeping platform and bring you own bedding. There was only space for 12 people so it never felt crowded and there was only 10 of us on the island. We had a safari tent, still a tent but a little more upmarket than the roof tent, along with real beds and being able to stand up in it, it had a balcony with a hammock overlooking the lake, pretty much all you could ever need on an island!
The luxury part of the island was that there was 2 butlers on the island that would arrange pretty much anything you needed. They bought us 2 huge butter fish from the local fishermen and then BBQ
them whole with some rice and veg, it was an amazing meal. That night we had a fire on the beach and sat up drinking cold beers chatting with the other guests until it was late, it was a very chilled night in a pretty spectacular setting.
After returning to the mainland we spent a couple of nights at a campsite right on the beach, Fat Monkeys. Our pitch was so close to the water that you fell asleep to the sound of the waves and woke up to the see the sun rising over the lake. After a couple of days here we headed to the Zomba Plateau. It is at the southern end of Lake Malawi and the start of the mountains. There were nice views on the long windy rocky road up and down. The campsite was deserted when we got there it felt a bit eerie being up there on our own, just as we were considered moving ‘Sandy’ turned up. ‘Sandy’ is the name of the landrover that Jacquie and Bob were driving from England all the way down to South Africa. They were following a similar route as us in Malawi so we
had met them a few times at various campsites. So we stayed and had a night camping with them cooking our food and drinking around the campfire, all good fun. We stayed a night on top of the plateau before heading into Blantyre then onto Mulanje.
Mulanje is further south and it is a border post into Mozambique. This area is where all the tea plantations are, it is higher up so therefore cooler and gets more rain. Driving through this area was very picturesque with the mountains in the background and the endless green fields of tea with all the workers scattered across them picking tea with big wicker baskets on their back. Whilst on the road conditions were the same going through the endless villages weaving through overloaded bicycles, goats, people running on the road to sell to things, chickens, carts pulled by cows and dilapidated overloaded vehicles. We stayed at golf club obviously built for ex pats, it was like you were in a time warp it was a 1970s leisure centre. But it had a pool with a slide and a diving board, overlooking Mt Mulanje so a fun place to spend the night, before
heading into Mozambique the next day.
We crossed through the border without a problem. Then started the long drive to Mocuba. It was 250 km but as it was dirt road it took us 6 hours. We hit Mocuba and started the drive north. After 30 km of bad road, and speaking to someone on the road who let us know that it was the same for the next 140km, then it turned to tar but had lots of potholes, we decided not to carry on as we had 600km to cover before we started to reach Ilha de Mozambique, then a further 200 km up to Pemba and we would have to retrace our steps back. The roads and vastness of Africa beat us! So we turned around and headed south. We still had 700km to cover before we got anywhere we wanted to stop. It took us three days of driving for 8 hours to reach Inhassoro. We stayed at Mocuba and Inchope they were just a place to crash for the night. After the long days of driving to reach Inhassoro we were convinced we had made the right decision not to venture further North as
we would have had to drive all that way plus the 500km further south we would have been driving for over a week. The roads in Mozambique are pretty bad there are few sections of good tar but then it becomes potholed and it is a slalom course through it, so it really slows you down.
Arriving at Inhassoro and hitting the Indian Ocean though was worth the driving. The next days of driving through Mozambique will not be as far as the bottom part of the central sections and the top of the southern section which will be covering is now more developed and supposedly the roads are a lot better so only a few hours driving in between stops.
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Rob
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Well done on drvinging across Africa, that is some acheivement...... I assumed you would have had the land rover towed away due to poor parking within days of getting there.