Week 2 update - Enter Malawi!

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As I have a steady internet supply available today, I might as well give you the latest news 😊

Currently, I'm in a nice little campsite on the outskirts of Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Since the last update was from Zanzibar I'd better fill you in on a few details...

We grudgingly left Zanzibar behind via a very choppy 2hr ferry ride back to Dar Es Salaam, and headed south west towards the Malawi border. There's not a lot of major towns between Dar & the border, so we were living off the truck for a couple of days, and camping at the roadside (both were sites used by the roads authority for stone / sand supplies, and I'm sure the truckful of workers who turned up one morning weren't expecting to see a bright yellow Oasis Overland truck and a dozen tents around their stoneheaps!).

One of the driving days involved an early start to drive through Mikumi National Park, and another chance to do some wildlife spotting, but as it was a main road everything was at a distance - except for a group of giraffes at the roadside posing for photos, which was great as the giraffes we'd spotted at Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro were some distance away.

And then, after a long drive we were at the border and leaving Tanzania.

Parting thoughts on Tanzania - lovely landscapes, a lot greener and hillier than I was expecting, and an awful lot of premiership football shirts of various vintages! (the Premier League is shown on the satellite channels here) - even the local minibuses are decked out with player / team names or images of players. The other thing I'll remember are lots of speed bumps and rumble strips on the approach & exit of every village, and there are a lot of villages, which bounces you around a lot in the back of a HGV! Although Zanzibar is now part of Tanzania (despite retaining it's border controls when you arrive from the ferry!) it's a completely different world, with great beaches and the lovely warm seas for great swimming and diving / snorkelling. Stonetown isn't that nice though. Overall though, Tanzania was a nice country to start to the trip from.

So, back to this week, and cross the border into Malawi (eventually, as the border officers didn't know where Estonia was, and as it wasn't on their list of how much to charge for a visa there was some delay while our two Estonian passengers were granted temporary restricted access and told to sort it out in the nearest town office!). With that delay, and a stop to get one of our guys off to hospital for a check-up because of malaria-type symptoms (it wasn't, thankfully) then we finally arrived at the first of our two stops on the shore of Lake Malawi.

Lake Malawi is amazing, a massive freshwater lake with long sandy beaches and, although a lot cooler than the seas off Zanzibar, equally good for swimming and diving (although there's less to see down there than there was at Zanzibar). After two days we moved down to Kande Beach site further down the lake, which was even better!

Malawi is known for it's intricate woodwork and furniture, and most of the group picked up something or other to ship home. We also got some great trip tee-shirts made up, all hand painted and personalised with the trip details. Unfortunately, clothes sizing is a bit hit and miss here, and my version of XL is obviously very different to the Malawi version!

Moving on again, we're now in Lilongwe, which looks nice enough, plenty of shops and an international airport (and not affected by the ash at the moment!). We're spending today here so our tour rep can go and sort out our visas for Mozambique today, rather than sit at the border crossing for several hours tomorrow (tomorrow will be long enough as it is - we're only transiting through Mozambique via Tete to get to Zimbabwe, but it will take a couple of long road days and an overnight bush camp somewhere en-route). Then we're into Zimbabwe (which most of the other overland trips still avoid) and Antelope Park near Harare, which should be the next chance to update, hopefully after meeting and walking with lions, which I'm very much looking forward to 😊

Anyway, the sun's shining, which means the pool at the campsite should have heated up nicely by now, so see you later 😊

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Comments

[Mum]

Great to hear from you
Sounds as though everything is still going swimmingly, at Lake Malawi at least. When do you get another chance of a swim - hopefully not at the top of Victoria Falls! The wanderlust must be catching - or we are just jealous - and I've prebooked our retirement cruise today so that we've got something to look forward to as well. We can't believe that you've been gone more than three weeks already - does it seem to be flying past for you as well? Looking forward to hearing the next account of your impressions of Zimbabwe.