Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Crossing the Rubicon
Well, the Songwe river to be more accurate - into Nyasaland. Although I'm sure Julius Caesar would have thought so, nonetheless.
People in Malawi were very friendly, helpful, polite, considerate and didn't spend their whole time trying to relieve you of your cash by surreptitious means. So pretty much the opposite of what we encountered in Tanzania. That's probably a little harsh, especially as the first and last persons we met in Tanzania were very friendly and helpful indeed; however, I did have to empathise with the (Malawi) gentlemen next to me on our first bus ride - "you'll be fine here, not like with that pack of thieving Swahilis next door". Anyway, moving on........
Our stay in Malawi was quite brief - five nights to be exact. In that time we managed to spend two nights in the very unexciting city (sic) of Mzuzu. Though that did give us the opportunity to witness the Trickies for the first time in months in some local bar (where we also managed to befriend half the Malawian army, but will save that one for another time). Not that the result was much different. Still, the barman did kindly put it on especially for us, though I'm not sure the locals who were watching the film on the other channel were so impressed, wearing the ubiquitous United/Mouser/Goners/Chelski shirts. I can't for the life of me understand why we haven't seen any Forest shirts yet, particularly given the fact that we managed to run into someone wearing one from that town down the other end of the A52.
In between such highlights, we managed to squeeze in a visit to the Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve. We were the first visitors there for four days and indeed the only people there that night too, so nicely away from any tourists. We did share our hut with a few too many mosquitos though, who seemed to spend most of their time getting under my net - with predictable results. (or it may have been a little earlier in the evening when Will spent most of the time half naked, without mosi repellent, staring out the local hippo population). We went to bed with the promise of seeing the elephants on our organised walk the next morning, as they had arrived that day, having been absent from that area for a good few weeks. However they decided that they wouldn't hang around for any longer just for us, so we got shown a load of uninteresting geese instead.
Next stop was Nkhata Bay, Lake Malawi, where backpackers go, never to leave again...except for us - we left within 24 hours of arriving. It is definitely the place to go if you like a) diving (in bilharzia infested waters) or b) hanging out with 17 year old backpackers (Will wasn't complaining too much about that one, at least not the female ones in bikinis). I decided it was probably time to leave when we found that there was nowhere to feed Will adequately...
Thankfully, we soon left that whole backpacker scene behind us, courtesy of riding in the back of a pick-up to Mzuzu with 17 other people and their entire offerings for market day. Then we had yet another fun-packed lengthy bus journey to the south.
Continuing our tour of great African cities that aren't worth visiting (Casablanca, Dar es Salaam thus far, and the promise of Lusaka still to come) we rolled into Lilongwe. The idea had been to roll out of it pretty much straight away and cross into Zambia, but we decided to embark on a safari the next day so ended up spending the night there (in some doss house, which cost us an impressive $4 dollars each). Not only did we have the prospect of a few days in Zambia's best national park, but this also meant that we got a further six hours further west across the continent in a decent vehicle - as opposed to trying to make it to, across, and beyond the border in several minibuses and taxis, probably with their windscreens falling out. One redeeming feature for Lilongwe is that it does have a rather good restaurant, which meant we had our first decent nosebag for a good while, along with some knockout South African wine. Magic.
People in Malawi were very friendly, helpful, polite, considerate and didn't spend their whole time trying to relieve you of your cash by surreptitious means. So pretty much the opposite of what we encountered in Tanzania. That's probably a little harsh, especially as the first and last persons we met in Tanzania were very friendly and helpful indeed; however, I did have to empathise with the (Malawi) gentlemen next to me on our first bus ride - "you'll be fine here, not like with that pack of thieving Swahilis next door". Anyway, moving on........
Our stay in Malawi was quite brief - five nights to be exact. In that time we managed to spend two nights in the very unexciting city (sic) of Mzuzu. Though that did give us the opportunity to witness the Trickies for the first time in months in some local bar (where we also managed to befriend half the Malawian army, but will save that one for another time). Not that the result was much different. Still, the barman did kindly put it on especially for us, though I'm not sure the locals who were watching the film on the other channel were so impressed, wearing the ubiquitous United/Mouser/Goners/Chelski shirts. I can't for the life of me understand why we haven't seen any Forest shirts yet, particularly given the fact that we managed to run into someone wearing one from that town down the other end of the A52.
In between such highlights, we managed to squeeze in a visit to the Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve. We were the first visitors there for four days and indeed the only people there that night too, so nicely away from any tourists. We did share our hut with a few too many mosquitos though, who seemed to spend most of their time getting under my net - with predictable results. (or it may have been a little earlier in the evening when Will spent most of the time half naked, without mosi repellent, staring out the local hippo population). We went to bed with the promise of seeing the elephants on our organised walk the next morning, as they had arrived that day, having been absent from that area for a good few weeks. However they decided that they wouldn't hang around for any longer just for us, so we got shown a load of uninteresting geese instead.
Next stop was Nkhata Bay, Lake Malawi, where backpackers go, never to leave again...except for us - we left within 24 hours of arriving. It is definitely the place to go if you like a) diving (in bilharzia infested waters) or b) hanging out with 17 year old backpackers (Will wasn't complaining too much about that one, at least not the female ones in bikinis). I decided it was probably time to leave when we found that there was nowhere to feed Will adequately...
Thankfully, we soon left that whole backpacker scene behind us, courtesy of riding in the back of a pick-up to Mzuzu with 17 other people and their entire offerings for market day. Then we had yet another fun-packed lengthy bus journey to the south.
Continuing our tour of great African cities that aren't worth visiting (Casablanca, Dar es Salaam thus far, and the promise of Lusaka still to come) we rolled into Lilongwe. The idea had been to roll out of it pretty much straight away and cross into Zambia, but we decided to embark on a safari the next day so ended up spending the night there (in some doss house, which cost us an impressive $4 dollars each). Not only did we have the prospect of a few days in Zambia's best national park, but this also meant that we got a further six hours further west across the continent in a decent vehicle - as opposed to trying to make it to, across, and beyond the border in several minibuses and taxis, probably with their windscreens falling out. One redeeming feature for Lilongwe is that it does have a rather good restaurant, which meant we had our first decent nosebag for a good while, along with some knockout South African wine. Magic.
# posted by William and Lucinda @ 12:09 pm 
