Saturday 19 June Sedna to Chitemba

This is the day I really fell in love with Malawi. It has such a variety of biomes. The area from Mzuza to the lake is really beautiful. One travels over a mountain pass and has a magnificent view from the top of Lake Malawi.

We pulled over to take a photo. There were two little local boys on the road and when they saw me get out the crossed the road to avoid walking past us. As we started the car again I offered them a sweet each. They screamed and ran up a steep bank into the bush. This is an extreme version of “don’t take sweets from strangers”.

The main form of transport in Malawi is bicycle. There are a few buses and some taxis but most people use bicycles. We saw men with their wives sitting side saddle on a specially made padded seat behind and some of the women even had a baby strapped on their back. The bicycles are even used to transport big bundles of wood, containers of water and produce. Amazing!

We really enjoyed the rest of the drive until we started looking for a campsite. Mark had found some prospective sites marked on a map. We saw one site signposted but Mark’s place was still 7.5km further on so we went to look for that. We didn’t find it and even the local policeman couldn’t help so we went back to the first place. It turned out to be quite good – called Sanctuary. No hot showers but we pitched our tent as it got dark and then went and had a beer in their beautiful pub which is a few feet from the lake shore. This photo was taken at sunrise the following morning. The wind had been blowing for a few days so the waves on the lake were quite high and crashed onto the beach - just like the ocean.

Malawians are very friendly relaxed people. They are also extremely poor. We made the comment that we had more possessions in our car than 90% of the people we saw on the roadside. The houses are small mud huts with a flimsy thatch roof. Life is simple but healthy. There doesn’t seem to be such a thing as an over-weight Malawian.

We’re becoming good at erecting and striking our tent – like a well oiled machine. Dinner is usually a couple of tins we brought with us. Amazing how delicious it tastes at the end of a long day of traveling. We managed a good nights sleep and managed to set out early on Sunday morning, headed for the Malawi/ Tanzania border.