Wednesday, July 21, 2010

20th July Fiona's Perspective

The border crossing into Malawi was pretty uneventful. We bumped into our biker freinds again at the Malawi side of the border. The BMW had a slashed tyre (not surprising after some of the roads travelled) and they needed to get a new tyre at a dealership in Lilongwe, Malawi or in Zambia. We tried to help them by making a few calls, but had no luck.

We had arranged to meet our Domestic worker's sister in Malawi in order to pick up some Rice and Mielie meal for her. Apparently the Rice and MMeal in Malawi is much nicer than the SA brands, but you cannot get it in SA. We called ahead and met Catherine and her husband at Kapolo, the third Police roadblock from the border.
What a nice couple. I took photo's for Elizabeth and a video message for her from her sister. When we get closer to Blantyre we will be going to meet her son, Precious at his school. We have saved some soccer balls and pens to hand out there.

I have never been to Malawi before and besides the fact that they have a large lake that stretches down the country for 580km I did not know what to expect.
I was surprised by how mountainous it is and how beautiful the drive through the mountains was. They seemed to go on forever.

We got a recommendation to stay at a place called Kande Bay on the shores of Lake Malawi. Well, if we had been 25 years younger, British and backpacking across Africa, this would have been where we would have stayed.
I think it was the worst place we have stayed in so far. We lit a big fire, used all our own Cutlery, plates etc as I was not eating off anything in the rondavel's kitchen. I even brought my own pillow in from the car as I wasn't sleeping on theirs.

So after the initial shock of seeing where we had to sleep for the night (moving was not an option, it was a long drive back to the main road and who knows what else we would find) we unpacked the car and lit a big fire and Alan made me a great meal! Rump steak, Veg accompanied by lots of Jamesons (this would help us sleep).

Another experience in Africa...
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