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Published: March 17th 2010
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Storm Rolling In
This was actually in Tanzania, on our way to Malawi. 21 Feb to 28 Feb
This post is a little late. I have completely lost track of the days and it is apparently now actually a Wednesday - although I am not too sure about that. Here on the tourist trail in Malawi and Zambia things like weekends don't seem to matter much. I might even be beginnng to miss the call of the muezzin and the regular shut downs on Fridays, but perhaps that is going too far. As we have moved through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia the camp sites have become ever more flash. The one we are in at the moment is very swish. Expensive yes, but swish and quite nice to have a bit of swish it is. It is Africa of course and, even here, the massive generator kicked in 10 metres from our tent at 3.00 am this morning. Apparently the power went out and the generators automatically kicked in. Great stuff.
It is the Wet Season here in Zambia. We hit it first in Malawi. Good, solid tropical rain. Great storms - although, so far, not as spectacular as we used to get at home in Batchelor.
The rain has
This was why
This accident caused by the wet road meant we didn't cross to Malawi as soon as planned its effects, even with the roads we are travelling on being pretty good. On our run out of Dar in Tanzania towards Malawi the road takes us through the Nikimi National Park. Pretty special driving along a reasonable highway and seeing the giraffes, elephants etc wandering around. Brings a whole new perspective to road kill though. We missed our appointed stopping place due to a road blockage - a semi had jack knifed either before or after a bus laden with passengers had hit it head on. No one was badly hurt but the road was properly blocked so we turned back and made camp at a camping area back a few kilometers, the Swiss Tan Camp Ground. Due to the blockage we had major time and distance to make up so that necessitated a 4.00 am departure. We were packed, loaded and ready to go 20 minutes early. Getting good at this sort of thing.
Malawi is a pretty much a travelling through sort of place. It doesn't really deserve to be. It is green and lush, plenty of water and the land, at least in the valleys, seems to be pretty fertile and productive. Houses here are
House and Garden
Anexample of the new housing inMalawi probably reflective of the environment. While many still have thatched roofs, a lot now use corrugated iron. Almost all are brick or block. The mud and stick arrangement popular in the more northern areas is not used much here. I suspect that the heavy rainfall and the rather strange - to me that is - practice of not normally using verandahs or large eaves would mean that the mud houses would not last very long at all.
Lake Malawi is the main feature of Malawi. I understand that neighbouring countries that share the Lake have not necessarily adopted the name. You can see why Malawi wants to claim it though. It is a very large lake and will, one day, be a major holiday destination on its own. So far there are just a few tourist type ventures as far as I could tell. We stayed at Kande Beach which is a place that boasts camp sites set up for the trucks and a well organised bar. They set up activities for the tourists - horse riding, diving, canoeing, fishing and the like - give them plenty to do during the day and then fill them full of grog
at night. There is scope for a lot more of this type of development along the lake shores and my guess is that there are a lot of tourists who would come to such a place.
There was also shopping available. They would not let the sellers into the establishment but they were outside the gates and on the beach. The interest here is in the wood carvings. Even the Australians were prepared to brave the quarantine people and purchase some of the things available. Most popular were so called 'Malawi Chairs'. The standard is good and even superb in some cases. We stayed at Kande for 4 days. It was supposed to be 2 but we blew a valve 20 minutes into the trip out and had to turn back. There is some suspicion that the village traders sabotaged the truck so that our intrepid little group of shoppers could have another go. If they did then the strategy was successful. It was rather handy that the truck had a lot of work done and was operating well when we left. It had more to carry.
The itinerary had planned to take us up to a forest
Second View
a bit further along the beach and national park. With the truck problem and the rain it was not possible to make it there and we headed straight for the border and Zambia. Through Zambia it has really been travel days. First night after the border crossing at Songwe we stayed at Chipata and then ran into Lusaka. Again a one night stay and a long drive to Livingstone.
Finally, I am now in the internet cafe and discovered that it is still not easy to load photos. So I'll publish all of the post texts first and then try again with the photos.
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