Malawi

I stepped off the plane in Malawi to the most beautiful day of the whole trip so far. Although the weather has been really good the whole time (we still haven’t been rained on once yet), it had always been a bit hazy or sometimes cloudy, but here it was a brilliantly bright, clear blue, cloudless day.

Strangely enough, there is no public transport from Lilongwe airport, but Sarah managed to chat to enough people to eventually find a couple that wanted to share a taxi into the town. As it happened, they wanted to go to the main bus station, which was exactly where we wanted to go. We wanted to get as close as we could to Lake Malawi to have a bit of beach time after the Kenyan safari, and after a bit of waiting around we eventually set off towards Monkey Bay in a minibus.

Another seemingly strange aspect of this trip so far has been the ease and effortlessness of nearly all our traveling. Everything I’ve read or heard about traveling in Africa always emphasizes how much stress and hassle it can be. But so far for us it’s been a breeze. Apart from this minibus to Monkey Bay (where we had to wait an hour and half for it to fill up before it departed) I don’t think we’ve had to wait more than five minutes before a departure. The number of times we just arrive, get a seat on a bus and then it just leaves is uncanny. Either that or we just happen to meet people going our way who have their own car, or they want to share a taxi, or we get free transfers, or whatever – it’s been great really. Long may it continue though, as we have heard some pretty bad stories (3 breakdowns in one day, or waiting in a minibus for 3 hours just for it to fill up with people, etc.).

So anyway, our minibus was supposed to go to Monkey Bay, but when it gets to Mangochi (about 60kms away) they just stop and say they’re not going any further (obviously because there wasn’t enough people interesting in going any further, i.e. just me and Sarah). But at least the guy gives me back some money (with the usual beaming smile and an apology), but now it’s dark and we have no map of the town we’re in and no idea of where to stay. Negator’s a bit freaked, but after walking for just a few minutes we find a place that isn’t too bad and settle down for the night after a nice dinner served by a lovely auld dear who chats to us for a good bit. Its the little unexpected events like this that make independent travel so interesting really.

Early next morning as we’re strolling to the bus station a pick-up truck just stops and asks if we want to go to Monkey Bay and so we just hop up (see above about effortless travel in Africa!). We do have a puncture on the way though, but within about 30 minutes we’re off again (the wheel was removed and taken by a passing truck up the road and 20 minutes later is brought back by a guy on a bicycle – they wouldn’t waste ‘cramming-in-more-people’ space by carrying a spare wheel). After another very short wait we catch another pick-up truck to Cape Maclear, and meet up with Matt and Lucy, an English couple traveling the world for a couple of years.

It’s immediately clear as soon as we step off the pick-up that this is an amazingly beautiful place – straight out of any paradise island brochure. We end up staying here for 4 nights in a lovely place right on the beach. Yet again we got lucky, as the first place we tried was full, thereby forcing us to check out other places, and the place we did find was not only a lot cheaper, it was a lot nicer, quieter and next door to the best place for food. So needless to say we just chilled out and relaxed. I had a couple of days exploring, one on foot, one on a bike. Another day we hired a sea kayak and paddled all over the place, including across to an island were we met up with Matt and Lucy who had snorkeling gear. The lake (which is fresh water, which is lovely to swim in) has loads of really colourful small fish, so the snorkeling was pretty impressive.

Then we continued kayaking and watched as Matt and Lucy (who had wimped out and hired a motorboat with guides!) threw fish for the fish eagles. We were perfectly positioned in our kayak as the eagle would fly just over our heads, swoop down and pick up the fish in it’s talons before flying back to a tree right beside us to eat it. It would also call to its mate with a wonderful sounding shriek – yet another wildlife highlight of the trip, how many is that already…?

At around this time I discovered that an apparently easy route to Harare was from the city of Blantyre in southern Malawi. Apparently you could get a bus directly there, which suited us perfectly. So from Cape Maclear we simply headed south, making our way in the general direction of Blantyre. Our first stop along the way was Liwonde National Park, and as it was Sarah’s birthday I decided to stay in a nice lodge inside the park itself, Chinguni Hills Lodge.

The lodge is really lovely, although it’s going through a phase of expansion at the moment – which was the primary cause of stress and concern for the owner, a brash South African named Darren. When we arrived in mid-afternoon he was already quite drunk, but clearly this was his usual state of being. The building work (constructing 7 new safari tents) was way behind schedule and his workmen were constantly approaching him with more and more bad news, to which he responded by shouting and berating them mercilessly. Later that afternoon I could hear him firing one of the cooks in a flurry of rather colourful language.

That evening was Sarah’s birthday, and we were sharing our dinner table with a lovely English family (a mother and her three daughters). Naturally we had to sing ‘Happy Birthday’, but Sarah was getting a little nervous about the state of Darren’s inebriation, so we tried to sing it very quietly. Not quietly enough though I’m afraid, and of course in comes Darren asking who’s birthday it was. Upon seeing Sarah he becomes rather crude and lewd, much to Sarah’s embarrassment, and the English mother has to try and explain Darren’s language to her 11 year-old daughter. Needless to say we didn’t join Darren for after dinner tipples – Sarah just wanted to go to bed!

The next day we had planned on taking another boat safari, but nobody else was booked to go. If we still wanted to do it we’d have to pay a bit extra, which we probably would have done. But over breakfast we met two English girls (Catherine and Helen) and a Canadian guy (Garry) who told us that they were driving in Garry’s car to another lodge to do the boat safari from there, and they asked if we’d like to join them. This was great, because I wanted to check out the other lodge anyway (which was way more expensive than Chinguni Hills), it would mean we’d have a free game drive (the other lodge was 24km away) and the boat safari, according to the guidebook, was much better from the other lodge (as it was in an area with a denser wildlife concentration).

The game drive was a nice drive, although we saw very little wildlife (Liwonde Park is known more for its river than for its plains), apart from a fabulous Malachite Kingfisher. The exclusive lodge wasn’t all that great either, in fact we all thought the lodge we were staying in was a lot nicer and had a lot more character (and this place was literally 5 times the price of where we were staying – you can’t help but look at all the people staying at this place and thinking the poor fools are being completely suckered). But the boat safari was really excellent. We had a small boat all to ourselves, just the five of us and our guide. We saw literally hundreds of hippos, lots of which were out of the water (on the previous boat safari all the hippos were in the water, with just the tops of their heads showing – they’re supposed to spend all day in the water and only come out at night to graze along the shores). We also got really close to large herds of elephants mingling with the hippos, and quite a few crocodiles, and of course loads and loads of birds. At times I was reminded of cruising on the Shannon, just drifting down the river, and yet again I found myself in a place were I could have easily spent the whole day, or even days.

We got back to our own lodge in the late afternoon and I went wondering as usual. You can’t venture too far without a guide (as the elephants can be dangerous), but there was a short trail to a great lookout tower built into a tree that gave a great view over the plain. After another great dinner in the lodge we headed out for a night safari, our first one of this trip. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see much, we were all hoping to see bush babies (mad looking teddy bear-like critters with impossibly googliy eyes), but the best of what we did see was a nervous looking hyena.

The next morning we lounged around after breakfast waiting for our transfer back to the nearest town and transport down to the next town, Zomba.