Zebrafish

July 24

Malawi

njaya lodge, nkhata bay

nkhata bay

I spent a week here Scuba diving and staying at the excellent Njaya lodge with my tent overlooking the lake. Managed to sharpen up my diving with 4 dives along with Jim and Tessa and Mat a welder from Powys and included an amazing night dive that finished in almost storm conditions on the surface. At night the vis was really low, I could only see about 5 metres through my torchlight and certainly couldn't make out the surface, but during the day we swam around large rock formations including a couple of tunnels and saw zillions of colourfull cichlid freshwater fishes. Many of these are unique even to certain bays in Lake Malawi and is one of the major sources of freshwater aquarium fish in the world. The dives here are excellent value at $20 a go including twice individual training with just the instructor Erhard.

I returned back to Lilongwe to meet Dana who was flying out to travel with me for 2 weeks. It was interesting to see Africa again through the new eyes of someone just arrived. As we went through my now normal process of squeezing onto buses, buying doughnuts and corn on the cob, even carrots through the bus windows at chaotic market stops and balancing on the back of pick up trucks and open lorrys along the rougher tracks.

fishing kids lilwonde np

Our first stop was at Liwonde National Park, we hired a motor boat to enter the park along a 2.75 hour safari upriver. Large groups of hippos lined the way along the river to the luxury Mvuu camp. We camped here just 50 metres away from Elephant tracks and went on a safari drive and a total of 4 hours guided bush walks. The guides were really informative and we learnt loads about animal tracking from footprints and the mysterious science of crapology.

hippos lilwonde np

We spent a night in Blantyre at our new friends Jim and Tessa's home, Tessa had been working as a doctor here for the past year. Then at Malawi's highest mountain, Mulanji we did a 4 day traverse along this "Island in the sky" that in parts was reminiscent of Scotland. In fact Scotland has had quite and influence on Malawi through Livingstone and him paving the way for other missionaries. They even make Highland Shortcake sold in tartan plastic wrapping!

dana on mulanje traverse

The first day we ascended steeply through cold mist crossing slippery rivers and up through a pine forest to the first hut. We met 5 South Africaners here who had just climbed the longest rock face in Africa over 4 days and were celebrating with a goat on a huge bonfire under the full moon. Next day was both up and down above the clouds crossing 2 valleys to Tchuilla hut where once again we bumped into Jim and Tessa. The nights were cold but the wardens provided plenty of firewood for us to cook on and sleep on our mats infront of the smouldering embers.

mulanje workers

Our guide Lewis, who was skipping off school, confided in me that he was saving up to buy a bicycle so he wouldn't have to walk the 10km to school each day and would we help him out. He'd been quiet most the walk but on the last night sat around the fire he talked quite a bit and asked many questions about life in Britain, about streetlights in villages and did everyone really own a car? We also talked a bit about colonial history and slavery as he only new bits from school. One of his questions was whether they still kill black people in Belgium? I told him they don't anymore which I hope makes future Belgians trips there a more friendly experience. We left Mulanje early in the morning to catch the truck out and met Lewis coming up the path with a brand new bicycle, the money we gave him came to exactly the same amount as his bicycle and so we left with smiles on our faces and a warm feeling for having helped someone out.

lewis gadson's bike

cape mcclear