Lilongwe

---

We left Kandi Beach Camp at 11:00am which is a late start by usual standards but it was good as it gave my hangover time to ease off a bit. About three minutes after leaving camp, before we hit the main road the truck got stuck in the sand. Everyone had to jump out whilst we got sand mats under the tyres to get the truck out again. It was so hot and took ages to do. The whole village seemed to come out to watch us and brought extra shovels to help dig us out of it. We spent most of the time playing with the kids from the village who were on a lunch break from school. We took pictures of them and let them see themselves on the screen and were swinging them in the air. My arms were killing me afterwards. Once we got going it was a long drive day. It was a really hot day, so much so that even the wind blowing through the truck was hot and doing nothing at all to cool us down. We also drove over some of the worst roads we have had so far. All in all we were happy to arrive at Lilongwe, the campital of Malawi early that evening.

Our campsite for the next three nights was Mbuya Camp, about a 15 minute walk out the the city centre. It was a nice small camp with the first hot showers we had had so I was quite pleased. The bite on my foot was getting much worse being quite red and swollen. I went to bed fairly early the first night and was up early the next morning to walk down into town. We jsut did some general bits and pieces, changing money, hopping on the internet to see some of the news, getting some things for lunch from the supermarket. It then got stupidly hot again (about 38 degrees) so we headed back. My foot was also a lot worse and it was painful to walk on. I just spent the afternoon by the pool, watching everyone play with the cute little puppy who had been taken in by the campsite owners. We had some new people join the trip too so I spent a bit of time getting to know them. Some people headed into town to a comedy club for the night but I stayed back with my feet up playing scrabble with some of the others, determined to keep off of my bad foot.

The following morning things got worse. My foot basically exploded in the shower and was now an open wound of sorts. Luckily for me we have 2 nurses and a pharmacist on the trip who gave me all the advice etc I needed. I just needed to keep it covered up and clean so it didn't get any worse. Easy enough I suppose. Another day of lounging around, keeping off of my very sore foot and basically soaking up the sun. We went to bed early that night as we had another 5 am start the next day as we were heading to the Zambian border.

---