Kande Beach

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After Lilongwe we travelled up to Kande beach which was on the shores of Lake Malawi. We caught the first combi from the local market and I got my pocket picked for the first time in my life. I felt my cheap - ready for stealing - sunglasses leave my pocket but I was paying the taxi driver and holding my packs so there wasn't much I could do. I didn't see anyone when I looked around. After about 5 hours on the combi we were supposed to change for another in Dwangwa but the guys on the bus offered us a ride to Kande for 10$ more for the 5 of us - which seemed a fair deal. The three of them then proceeded to laugh and clap and high five while chatting to us about where we were from. When they tried to take us to another close beach and found out that Kande was 100km up the road the smiles disappeared from their faces and when we pointed out they needed to drive us back to the town to catch a combi and give our money back they fell very silent, but complied. We got another bus pretty soon and that took us to Kande where we then walked the last 3km to the beach accompanied by a group of locals the most vocal who called himself Christopher Columbus. We were told the next day that the locals had taken to giving themselves western names to help foreigners.
Kande beach was a nice stop. Lake Malawi is massive and quite warm for swimming and we got a hut right on the little beach. The next morning we got up and I wanted to find some new sunglasses to replace those pickpocketed. A few of the locals in the shack/shops right outside the front gate of the resort offered me their face oakleys for prices between $5 and $20 and testified to their authenticity, but I thought I would try for a local market. A local named Jay walked us around the settlements around the lake on a bit of a wild goose chase but we ended up at the main road where he told us the same pair would cost $5. The shopkeeper told us they were $1 which seemed like there was a high comission, so after some disagreement with Jay we ended up giving the stallholder $3 for the glasses after Jay had headed back to the beach. They have turned out to be great sunglasses - and quite comparable to the real Oakleys which I saw at the next stop. They could have been made from the same mould...
We chilled out at Kande for a while and read, and then we would head up to Ngata bay

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