Malawi and its Lake

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From South Luangwa NP we drove 150km to the Zambian/Malawi border at Chipata. Our visas for Malawi were free! Excellent, I like this country already! We drove another 2 hours to the capital Llongwe. It seemed a very nice, low-key city, especially for a capital as we drove through it to our campsite. The following day we got to explore it a bit more and I still felt the same, the people were friendly and the city had a nice feeling although there wasn't much to see. In the afternoon, we headed north along Lakes Road, although we didn't see the great lake for quite awhile. We drove through tropical scenery and lots of villages; the children were very excited to see white people! The houses were different again, ,ostly made of red brick although there were some traditional mud huts. The Malawi people seem to be much more slef-sufficient with their large gardens and various crops. We arrive late into our campsite on the shores of Lake Malawi. A really great campsite at Kande Beach. I positioned my tent as close to the beach as possible and with the door opening out onto it. When I went to sleep that night I was relaxed by the sound of the waves (yes the lake has huge waves!) - best night sleep so far! We had three full days at Kande Beach, time for me to do some scuba diving in the 3rd largest freshwater lake in Africa - a new experience for me as I've never dived in freshwater - completely different environment! We saw lots of fish but there were no corals just rocks, really good not to be bombarded with too much to see. I also started my advanced diving course which allowed me to dive to 30metres. I also got some time to sunbath, walk through the local fishing village and do some souvenir shopping. I bought a malawi chair carved with the big five - I'm going to have to ship that home at some point!

After a relaxing few days we drove further north along the lake through some beautiful mountainous scenery. We stopped over night one last time on the edge of the lake before making our way into Tanzania the next day.

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