Day 39 came and after a good night’s sleep I was up as the sun was rising. I walked down to the beach and was soon surrounded by curious local young men and boys, with whom I chatted for a while. They were selling bracelets and other small souvenirs and I told them I promised one of them who seemed nicest and was least pushy that I would visit his shop outside the campsite after breakfast. I kept my promise and bought three bracelets for a few dollars later on.
We then packed up our truck again and headed towards Mzuzu, where we did our shopping, had lunch in an Indian restaurant where it took nearly an hour to get our food and bought costumes for a dress party that would be held at the houseboat in Zimbabwe.
Our main destination in Malawi was Kande Beach on the shore of Lake Malawi. As we were staying for three nights and it was a very lovely beachfront location, I enquired about upgrade options and ended up sharing a twin beach chalet with Caitlin. The chalet was a simple but lovely little cottage right on the beach with a little terrace overlooking the lake. Definitely worth 10$ a night! The weather at Kande Beach was hot and humid, but I got a good night’s sleep as there was a fan in the chalet to keep us cool.
For the next morning’s activities I’d decided to do another village walk. As soon as we exited the gates a whole bunch of young men joined us and after the initial shock of all the questions raining down I settled to chat with a few of them, and they followed us all the way to the village and I enjoyed the conversations we were having. The village walk again included a visit to some clay huts, before proceeding on to a school, and then a health centre. We were told that there is no doctor at the health centre, only a practicing nurse. They have a maternity ward, but they only accept deliveries from the mother’s second child onwards. For their first borns the mothers have to travel to a hospital 85km away in a bigger town, as the village health centre is not equipped to help if there is any difficulty in the labor. The health centre was full of people and we were told that most people go there to test for malaria, as it is very common in this area and while we visited the school our guide actually picked up his nephew to be tested because he had fever. Both the school and the health centre talked to us about their difficulties with getting enough funding for supplies, and for the first time we were actually presented with boxes for donations, and as I know Malawi to be one of the poorest countries in the world, I donated 5$ in each location.
The day was again very hot and the sun was harsh, and I was thankful for the umbrella provided by our young friends from the village. As we arrived back to the camp they invited us to visit their shops, and seemed disappointed when I didn’t buy anything. I felt a bit guilty, but I’m not very keen on souvenirs and don’t want to buy stuff I don’t need. I spent the rest of the day mainly enjoying the breeze from the fan in our room, and after dinner we had a little party in the bar.
The next day it was raining. It rained and rained and rained, and I was disappointed to hear that the horse riding I had booked for the afternoon was cancelled because of the weather. We spent a rather dull, rainy day at the camp. Some locals had been cooking a whole pig for us and my cooking group only needed to prepare the sides.
The next morning we were up early as there were 400km to cover before the border. Day 42 and another country to go to! It felt weird to be leaving Malawi already, and it almost seemed like we didn’t see much of it at all, as we mainly stayed at the campsite the whole time. I must say I liked it very much, and actually enjoyed Kande Beach more than Kendwa in Zanzibar, as the beach in Lake Malawi was very beautiful and also peaceful as our group was the only one staying there. Also there were no touts bothering you on the beach.
It felt a bit confusing that we were already going to be in Zambia, we had barely realised we were in Malawi! It was definately too quick, I would’ve loved to spend a few more days and seen a few more places! Border crossing went smoothly and we stopped for shops in Chipati. It was still quite a long way to go to the camp, and it was already getting dark when we arrived to the campsite.
The campsite was a bit of a shock. We were supposed to be staying in this really great campsite called Crocolide Camp right next to South Luangwa National Park. That one is situated right next to the river, and they regularly get all kinds of wildlife from hippos to crocs at the campsite, but unfortunately the river had flooded more than usual so the whole campsite was underwater. For this reason we had to go to another campsite about half an hour drive from the park. This alternative campsite was quite awful. It was also filled with wildlife, but not the kind we like. There were bugs crawling everywhere, I’ve never seen so many and such a variety of bugs in one place! After setting our tents among the ants, spiders, millipedes, frogs and beetles we went to take a look at the pool and found the water too dirty for swimming. The bar served neither cider or wine, and the showers were cold. We’d be staying here for two nights, great! Somehow it seems that everytime we have a nice campsite it’s only an overnight stop and we barely see them in daylight, and when we stay longer it’s often a very basic one.
Early in the morning we got on our truck to go to the national park. When the river had flooded some time earlier it had washed away a bridge leading to the park, so we drove the truck to the place where the road had broken, crossed the bridge by walking and continued on safari vehicles to the park. The game drive itself was quite uneventful, we had three cars and one of them broke off quite early on. When we caught up with them on the way back, we were surprised to hear that they had had a close encounter with a leopard! So while the other two cars were driving aimlessly around the park looking mostly at bush, they had beelined straight to a leopard! It was quite disappointing that the drivers hadn’t communicated to each other about the leopard sighting, as all of us in the other two cars would’ve been very eager to see a leopard! As we were returning to the truck to get back to the campsite, we were surprised to find our truck sideways on the road, stuck in the ditch! Luckily there was a forklift truck on site, and it easily lifted our truck enough to get it out of trouble, and only after a few minutes wait we were on our way back to the camp.
In the afternoon I took a nap on the sofa at the campsite, as there was not much else to do. Later it was time to go on another game drive to see if we could spot some nocturnal animals. After some driving we passed a group of baboons that were sounding very alarmed, and our driver said they’ve spotted a predator, probably a leopard. After a few more meters of driving we could see what they were seeing, and that was one very pleasant surprise! It was not a leopard at all, but something even better, a pack of painted dogs! I had not expected to see these elusive canines anywhere, so this was very exciting! The car in front of us told is that they had killed an impala just moments before we arrived, and were now frantically tearing it apart. They were yelping with joy and having a bit of a food frenzy, it was great to watch them! You could hear the bones cracking as they were crushing the poor impalas bones with their powerful jaws. Apparently they eat every bit of their pre, bones and all, except the horns. I wouldn’t want to run into a pack of these in the bush, no matter how cute they are!
While we were watching the dogs Charlotte suddenly shouts out ”Oh my god, there’s a crocodile crossing the road!” I looked to the left and indeed, a crocodile has just emerged from the grass behind the dogs and is heading towards the water. Right, I’m never going bush toilet ever again! We go on and have a little picnic by a big baobab tree, which, depending on which driver you ask, is either 500 or 1000 years old. Whatever the truth, it is definately big and the sunset is beautiful. We then proceeded to do a night drive, and a spotter joined our truck with a big floodlight to look for nocturnal animals. We spotted a couple of owls, some hares and a bunch of hippos. Still no sight of leopards, but as I shone my tiny head torch into the bush I could see a lot of glowing eyes. Seems that the best way to find animals in the bush at night is to have a small light to finfd their eyes, then a big light to see them properly. At one point when I’m shining the little light into a field, hundreds of glowing eyes light up in the distance. I could only assume they are impalas, it’s a pretty cool sight to see just the eyes glowing in the darkness!
The next day was just a long driving day as we made our way towards the houseboats. We spent one night at a boring excecutive hotel’s campsite, where they have an emu for some reason. The next day we drove to Lusaka, where we shop for food and drinks for the houseboat, have lunch in Nando’s and somehow a two hour stop turned into three and a half hours. This time our overnight campsite was really nice, again it’s a shame that we are there only for a very short time! The campsite was nearly in the center of town and it surprised us that right outside we could see zebras and impalas. We cooked wraps for dinner and although I didn’t agree with the recipe at all (there was no salsa, rice or guacamole, just beans, chicken, onions and salad) I got to play music from my playlist during cooking for a change, and people seemed to enjoy it very much as they asked to leave the music on while we were eating! This completed our time in Zambia, and also marks the end of this blog post, that’s been long due!
Jenni's Africa 