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Currency: Kwacha, 290kw to 1 quid
Cost of diesel: 60p a litre
10th December
Well, it seems things are looking up. After the rain and mud and knackered car of the last few days we’re now chilling out in the sun on a beautiful beach in Malawi. Crossing the border was easy and even more impressively: free. British national don’t pay for a visa or to import the car. Very pleased. From the border we headed south (fairly obviously seeing as we’re going to Cape Town!) for about 140kms to a place called Chilumba. This is a little fishing village on Lake Malawi. The campsite is on the beach and we are ale to drive the car onto it and so are camping on the sand with stunning views of the lake and the escarpment behind it. Lake Malawi is another one of the rift valley lakes and it is enormous. Due to it being 365 miles long and 52 miles wide Livingstone called it the calendar lake. It is so big it looks like the sea. Due to fact that is over 700m’s deep, making it the 3rd deepest in the world (after Baikal and Tanganyika), there is such a body of water in the lake that it is tidal. Even the Med is barely tidal! Both sides of the northern shores of the lake are flanked by the sides of the rift, making for these towering escarpments that run straight down into the water. In-between the spurs of the escarpments you find white sandy beaches and this is where we are now. The campsite is an overlander’s truck campsite, which means that it has a busy bar and loads of people coming and going. Although we have tended to avoid these places where possible, mainly due to the fact that it seems like all overlanders are simply on an enormous international pub crawl (which is effectively what Billy, Deano and I did around South America. Oh Yeah, for those that know Deano, my housemate from uni, he’s getting married) the places get very busy and noisy. However, after the struggle to get here from Rwanda it is nice to come to place where there’s beer and other people to travellers to talk to. It’s run by an English guy who is very welcoming and basically plies you with beer. We were planning on leaving today but after last night it’s probably best if we don’t!
Our first proper glimpse of Lake Malawi, Below is Chitumba Beach, where we camped
11th December
We have to leave today!! Managed to have another rather large night in the bar yesterday. Everything here is done on a tab (basically so you spend more money) and I am dreading finding out what it will be after 3 of us drunk the bar out of gin! We met a cool couple called Nicole and Matthijs and spent the evening chatting and drinking with them. They are hitch-hiking north from Cape Town and seem to have similar views to us on overland trucks! In my hazy recollections of last night I think I might have agreed to walk across the Pyrenees from Biarritz to Barcelona with Matthijs in 2 years time! It takes 2 weeks and is supposed to be amazing. Maybe that can be my next adventure!!
Chitumba beach at dusk
12th December
Although it took us about 2 hours to pack our camp up (we can normally do it in 20 – 30 mins!) we did finally manage to leave Chilumba yesterday. Our originally plans were to try and get as far south into Malawi as possible. However, since Kili it seems like we’ve been on the go for a long time. Although going to Uganda etc was well worth it, it means that in the last 9 weeks we’ve driven 12000km (and a week of that was up the mountain and so no mileage done) and I’m starting to feel it! We’ve decided to slowly make our way down the Lake, stopping at the best places to go diving and so we are now in a place called Kande Beach. This another stunning white beach with views across the lake. The diving here is supposed to be excellent. There are over 1000 species of Cichlid fish in the lake. We are also going to do a night dive hopefully. The other good thing is that the diving costs 25 – 30$ a dive. Diving normally costs 50$ so it’s really cheap.
Having said all that, and that we are going to relax on the beach in the sun for the next few day we should actually be diving right now. The reason we aren’t is that it is pouring with rain, blowing a gale and because the lake is so large the waves are too big to launch the dive boat!! So much for getting a tan and lying on the beach. We’ve been told a local that it should stop raining by lunch time. Although the locals don’t seem to know anymore than us. The last guy I asked if it was going to rain said he’d had a word with god and been told categorically that it wasn’t going to rain. It poured all night!
More views of Lake Malawi
The island that we dived on and around. This is off Kande Beach. This is what a beach campsite looks like when it pisses rain all night!
13th December
The weather finally cleared up enough for us to go diving yesterday afternoon. There were hundreds of brightly coloured cichlids. However, because of the storm the visibility in the water wasn’t that good. Still it was a good dive none-the-less.
I wanted to do another dive this morning but again the weather was terrible. It was also a shame because Amy had arranged to go horse-riding along the beach whilst I was diving. Because of the weather the people from the stables never showed up and when they turned up to pick the afternoon riders up Amy was told that there wasn’t enough space for her to go. Pretty bad form if you ask me. I did manage to get another dive in this afternoon and although the vis still hadn’t improved I actually saw loads more fish than yesterday. I’ve now decided to get another fish tank at home and stock it with cichlids. On that note, I hope my fish tank is still in working order, Dodge, and that you haven’t poisoned all my fish!!
Kande Beach at dusk, couldn't get any other good photos because it rained the whole time we were there!
14th December
Managed to wangle a free meal last night! We’ve been following this overland truck for the last few days and have got to know the driver and guide quite well. Koen, the driver, has been having trouble with the truck, and although to say I helped him would be a bit of an overstatement because he is a far better mechanic than I, I did give him a lot of moral support and thus we got invited to the bbq they were doing that night. They had managed to pick up an entire sheep for 40$ (either that or it was some road kill and Koen didn’t want to tell his passengers) and were grilling it on the beach. So we got an excellent meal of bbq sheep and veggies. Makes a welcome relief from tuna pasta, (we've become a bit lazy with our cooking of late!).
We left Kande beach this morning to head another 250km down the lake to another beautiful beach in a place called Senga bay. Haven’t got a huge amount to say really because there’s nothing to do here except lie on the beach and relax and this is exactly what we are doing. Tomorrow we head to the capital, Lilongwe, to do some shopping and internet etc.
Senga Bay Beach. Camping on the beach, trying to dry our mattresses after 3 days of rain!
15th December
In Lilongwe now. Staying at Hippo camp, sadly there are no hippos though, unless you include the dead hippo skull outside reception. Went to the African equivalent of Macro and stocked up on tins, the car is now groaning under the weight of 500 tins of tuna in the back. I might play golf at the Lilongwe gold club tomorrow. There is some history behind this in that my housemate from uni, Billy, learnt to play here (both the use of the word learnt and play are used in the loosest possible sense as golf is not one of Bill’s strengths) and so I have to follow suit and see if I can re-turf the course in a similar way to him. For those that don’t know Billy this is all boring, for those that do it will hopefully provide some vague amusement. Will report more in a few days.
Our little tent hiding under a tree. Maybe this is the hippo that the camp is named after.
OK, so maybe the ginger beard is getting a little out of hand.
17th December
Never actually got around to playing golf even through the course was only about 2 mins from our campsite. Instead we sorted out our stuff for Cape Town, tidied the car and generally sorted stuff out in preparation for leaving the car over Xmas. Also filled her up with 250l of diesel because although it cost me 250$ would have cost 500$ in Zambia! Apart from that we didn’t do much. Onto Zambia tomorrow.
