Lilongwe

My last stop in Malawi before my visa ran out was the capitol city. A rather unremarkable city with not much more than supermarkets and malls to go to. I stayed at a diocese which was maybe the highlight of Lilongwe for me. There was a little church, a kindergarden, a guesthouse and cemetery around the corner. Lilongwe is just not the travellers dream - scattered, without character. I better move on to my next blog entry before I bash harder than necessary.

Blantyre

Blantyre is the economic center of Malawi. It hosts some high rises and modern buildings, but if you walk from downtown for 10 minutes into a direction you’ll end up on farmland. I didn't get better so I decided to go to the hospital which by coincidence was right next my guesthouse. The Indian doctor tried to do some test, but was only able to exclude some theories after getting the results. He decided to carpet bomb to make sure I'll get better. I did get better and was eating at a Middle Eastern and an Ethiopian place most of the time. Really good food. Eventually I had the energy again to walk around and found out that there is nothing to see and decided to head to Zambia without extending my Malawian visa.

Zomba

The Zomba plateau is the main attraction around here. But even though I stayed there for 3 nights I was not able to see anything about it. The New Zealander left me after one night to rush down to Cape Town. So I was there with fever well over 39°C. It was raining and I never found a good restaurant. I didn’t eat anything anyway. Things where getting nasty and I moved to Blantyre to be close to a real doctor. I would like to write more about Zomba, but I only know about the supermarkets and the internet café.

Liwonde

It took us for ever to reach the Safari Camp outside the gates of Liwonde National Park. The car was overloaded and we hit stones all the time. Since it was rental car we were a bit worried. We camped near the Lodge and cooked some vegetables we bought on the way. Elephant and hippo footprints and turds were surrounding us, but during the night no animals showed up. But it was possible to hear them. Sadly it rained during the night and everything got soaked. I was getting increasingly weak because of small appetite during the last few days and felt like I am going to be sick soon.

We did a canoe safari in the morning, which took us into a swamp with high gras. We saw a big group of elephants 50 meters away and observed them for while. The guide was extremely afraid because in the thick vegetation its impossible to move fast with the canoe and the elephants hate humans because they were poached in Mozambique during their civil war. We moved on and made are way up river. A group of hippos was chilling in the cool water after grassing all night. Some antelopes and war hogs were grassing on the shore. The wildlife was nice, but rather scarce. The morning mist over the water and in the rainforest was a nice sight by it self.

After a snack in the camp, we took the car of the German girls and visited the National Park by road for one hour. Baboons, different types of antelopes, more war hogs were all we saw. Then we had to leave because the girls had to rush to Blantyre and drop the New Zealander and me of in Zomba. The suspension of the car rear, right wheel broke and the tyre scratched on the chassis. To get rid of weight the girls went on by themselves and we took a minibus to Zomba.

Cape Mclear

After arriving in Monkey Bay we (a couple from San Fran and a well travelled New Zealander) jumped on the back of a pick up which drove us to Cape Mclear. It used to be a hippy place in the early 80s, but lost its footing afterwards. Now it’s rebounding a bit and already has one up market hotel. People are still struggling and are desperate to sell you crap. We rented a nut shell, snorkeling gear and two paddles as thin as a stick and paddled out to an island. Close to the marine park we saw abundant fish life right in front of us. It was the second nicest snorkeling experience of my life - really cool. After paddling back we found a cheap bar and drank some beers. In the hotel we met two German doctors, who are travelling after their internship. They had a shitty car and they invited us to drive us down to Liwonde National Park the next day. We were in Cape Mclear only for a short time, but we saw most of it. A nice little place.

Lake Malawi

The Ilala is an old ferry that has been built during the British occupation of Malawi. It is the only ferry on the lake and many villages depend on it. Besides of passengers it is vital for the “sipa” trade. It has three decks and two different classes. The cheap one sucks and you are close to the engine and the cargo. The first class is on the upper deck which is perfect to enjoy the sun. A bar serves the thirsty and a restaurant the hungry. But even the first class fails to deliver beds to the passengers, so you end up sleeping on the wood of the deck. Rats and cockroaches are common. We were playing chess or cards, chatting, reading or bitching about the speed of the ferry. It is actually not too slow but it hardly ever turns on the engine. In each place you stop (there are about 8 places you stop in 4 days) the unloading and loading takes easy 8 hours. The reason it takes so long is that with the exception of Nkatha Bay and Monkey Bay there are no deep sea ports. So the Ilala has to lower the 2 small boats on the side and then they have to fill them up with cargo, go to the beach, unload, come back, etc. It takes very long and if the waves are to high work gets suspended till better times.

On the way you see some random sights like the islands in the middle of Lake Malawi, Mozambique, nothing but water in the middle of Africa or naked kids paddling out to the boat on a tree trunk.

Nkhata Bay

After a smooth shared taxi drive I was in the middle of the small fishing village of Nkatha bay. Lake Malawi sends small waves to the shores and people sell “sipa” (tiny sun dried fish) on the main road. Huge bags full of sipa are getting loaded on trucks to be sold in Mzuzu and Lilongwe. One 80kg bag costs about 20$. The whole center of the village smells like fish, not badly but like fish. People are friendly and you only get harassed by the cool Bob Marley type Rasta boys, which use American slang. There business is selling Marijuana and art to tourist to get drunk in the evening. I have never seen a village so focused on alcohol (sometimes ethanol mixed with water) as Nkatha Bay. If you go out during the night (actually also during the day) and go into the cheapest bars you see people past out, guys struggling to stand or people trying to get to that stage while ordering beer or drinking sachets with 40% alcohol. There are no women in the bars with the exception of the occasional prostitute. “Shake-Shake” is the cheapest beer in town. You get one liter for less than half a dollar. It is based on maize and has to be shaken before drinking. The empty Tetra Pak cartons are scattered all over… ok, enough about the alcohol problem of this village, but it is really extreme.

I checked into the Big Blue Star which is nicely located on the lake shore and has a sundeck, hammocks, TV, a bar with panorama view, good but pricey food (read 6 dollars for a pizza) and chilled out atmosphere. There was a Swiss guy, that has been travelling (he worked on the way and went back to Switzerland several times) for the last 5 years with his motorbike around the world. Then of course the Peace Corps volunteers who are talking about them selves and having sex with the local community, as there would not be a huge HIV problem. Some English doctors who are travelling after their internship, a random 60 year old Austrian sex tourist, a chilled out Israeli spending his military money, a interesting, elderly Japanese guy who made me want to visit Japan even more, a gay, Canadian receptionist who has a cocaine problem and many more. A nice zoo to research human behavior under the influence of alcohol.

I always ate in the village either at the Hot Spot which serves 1.75$ rice with beef stew dishes, the Indian place who has curries for 3$ or the Christian place who has a version of Spaghetti Bolognese also for 3$.

If you buy French fries from the street you can have a plastic bag full with a bit of salad and an extra splash of old oil for 33$cent. A beer is generally 66$cent. Malawi is good to your wallet.

The hostel also has a canoe to use, which I took around the bay area several times. Local kids love to swim in their lake and the mothers are doing laundry at the rocky shores. The lake is also good for scuba diving and has (if I remember right) the greatest amount of fish species in a fresh water lake of the world.

Great times, but after 10 days the ferry arrived (1 day late) to take me all the way down to Monkey Bay.

Mzuzu

Mzuzu is the main city north of the capitol Lilongwe. There are many banks, a huge market, some restaurants and a backpacker. Finally my week of failures came to an end within a half an hour. I found a Standard Chartered Bank which supports Mastercard and a backpacker with some atmosphere. Even though it was not the nicest place ever I managed to spent 3 nights there. A lot of Peace Corps Volunteers hang out there so it doesn’t get boring. Peace Corps people – generally spoken - are in love with them selves and have nothing else to speak about. The way I understood it, they are as inefficient as all NGO I heard of. Sometimes I think all these programs serve the volunteers interest more than the peoples. They get to travel a bit without spending a lot. A good part of the money that is being spent ends up in the hands of some local fat people who can get a bit fatter. NGO have generally failed and are now a days mostly run like businesses. There are maybe some innocent ones, but in time they will get corrupted as well.
I rested a bit in Mzuzu after all these bus rides that took me from Zanzibar to Mzuzu in a week. Then I went to the Promised Land – Nkatha Bay.

Karonga

After 3 hours on the Tanzanian side, a border crossing full of touts and an 1 hour shared taxi drive to Karonga I needed some money. All the ATM refused my Maestro Card and I had forgotten my VISA code. I had some Tanzanian Shilling to exchange. But the banks don’t want them and the guy behind the foreign exchange office in the National Bank of Malawi advised me to try on the black market instead. So I did and had at least some cash. Karonga is a boring place with a lot of dust, no cheap lake side hotels and no attractions whatsoever. The next day I wanted to go to Livingstonia, which is located in the mountains west of Lake Malawi. At the turnoff I got out and quickly found out there is no public transport and that hitching is difficult and a taxi expensive. So I was sitting in the bus again. This time to Mzuzu. The buses are cheap and crowded – fish smell surrounds you mixed with sweat and the occasional drunk smell like a barrel of cheap rum.