Day 8 - Kande Beach (Malawi)

Hello!

It's been ages since I've managed to get back on the internet. Not that I'm desperate or anything, but it just shows how much I depend on it at home. Time seems to have slowed right down now and the past week has lasted forever - not in a bad way, but because we seem to be doing and seeing so much.

We left Zanzibar last Tuesday morning and the ferry crossing was ROUGH! There were so many people rushing out on deck to be sick and I even felt the effects myself. I could only prevent the nausea by focusing my gaze on the horizon and it seemed to work until I got a faint, but strengthening whiff of everyone else's vomit. Not pleasant. I felt particularly sorry for the girl sitting in the row next to ours where she was unfortunate enough to be given a sick bag with a hole in it and it made a terrible mess of her otherwise immaculate outfit. Poor thing.

Camping has been great fun and we've had about 5 nights of it so far at various campsites. Traveling into Malawi has been brilliant as the it really deserves its name of "The Friendly Heart Of Africa". Everyone is SO friendly, especially the kids. As we've been driving along the road, almost all of the children come rushing to wave and say hello to us and it's really touching - I can understand why Madonna came here to nick one of them... Their little faces are guaranteed to make you smile, even after a 8 hour drive in the back of a truck full of sweaty passengers.

We were woken up this morning at about 5.30 by loads of banging and shouting and Rich went to investigate on his way to the loo again (he's had a poorly tummy for the past three days!). As he was gone for quite a while, I went to investigate what all the comotion was. It turned out that the fishermen on the lake were returning with their morning's catch and as they came on to the beach they would beat their oars against the bottom of their small boat. Very exotic. Their catch didn't look like much, other than a few small spratts in the bottom of a wooded bowl but the kids seemed very proud of it and took great delight in showing us. The sunrise was pretty good too.

Today we were due to stay at the Luwawa Forest in another campsite, but the rain was teaming down by the time we reached Mzuzu and since the road would have been impassable we came to Kande Beach instead. I'm glad we did as it's beautiful here. The beach overlooks Lake Malawi which is huge (550 Km long) and the water is warm and clear. As we'd already done 5 days of camping we decided that we'd upgrade to a small cabin tonight with ensuite showers and a proper bed. It really feels like cheating, but since it's only about £20 per night it seems like a bargain. Tomorrow we're going to look round a local village so we can see how the Malawians live and taste some of their food and sample the culture. I hope it's not going to be patronising. In the afternoon we're planning to go horse swimming. I'd never heard of it either, but it entails going for a horse ride, then taking the horse in the lake for a swim; they love it, apparently...

There's still no facility to post photos unfortunately, so I'll have to do that when I get back unless I find somewhere to do it in the meantime.

I learned today about the mating habits of a certain type of cichlid fish that lives in the lake and I'd love to share it, but there may be some younger readers reading this and I'd hate to offend anyone!

Bye for now...