Beach Life

Morning all,

Time to pick up where we left off, in Malawi...

So, Chitimba Beach, what to say? Well, it's bloody gorgeous. The campsite fronts onto the beach of Lake Malawi, which is something like the 3rd biggest lake in Africa (behind Victoria and Tanganyika, all of which Tanzania borders on, trivia-fans...). You can't see the far side of it, so it's pretty much like the sea, only with fresh water so it doesn't sting your eyes like crazy if you spend time splashing in it. And it's lovely and warm at this time of year. My first priority on arrival, though, was at the bar. No, not to feed my incipient alcoholism, mother (or at least, not entirely for that) - I needed to find a power point to attempt to recharge my MP3 player, which had had a slight mishap...

You see, one of the useful little items which I bought in my shopping frenzy before leaving the UK was a "Platypus", which is basically a clear plastic water-bladder, with a drinking tube running out of it, which can be fitted into the back of a rucksack. This has come in handy at many times on my trip, but at one point was almost an almighty liability, as I forgot that I had left it fairly full when I crammed my daypack into my locker at the back of the truck (that's one of the things that really makes life easier on Acacia compared to some of the other companies we bumped into, and causes jealousy - we have big lockers at the back of the truck, and so can effectively unpack our packs, fold them flat at the back or sides, and live out of the locker rather than having to perpetually unpack and repack our backpacks). Unfortunately, the end of the drinking tube got squezzed and proceeded to dispense water over much of the base of the locker, some of which appears to have gotten into my beloved Zen player. The damned thing wouldn't start up to start with, and then wouldn't hold a charge, so I was worrying that I'd managed to kill the thing within a few weeks of being on the road.

Luckily, though, I managed to stumble on a fix for it - I recharged it whilst at Chitimba, and then stuck it on a random play of anything from my music list, meaning that it wouldn't automatically turn off and would actually force the thing to run through a full battery charge. This seems to have got anything iffy out of the system (possibly just by warming it up enough that the water evaporated off...) and it's been generally fine since then. Anyways, sticking the thing on charge (like most sites we stayed at, pretty much all the power sockets on the site are in the bar, and only functional when the generator is on) got me chatting with Adela, one of the owners, who'd just got back from the UK (she's a Pom), and Roy, her manager.

Roy is another of those extraordinary characters you meet while travelling, wandering around much of the time in just his sarong and being extraordinarily blunt (well, politically incorrect would probably now be the politically correct term!), whilst also very friendly. I ended up in a not-altogether-unsuccesful attempt to synthesise a capirinha using Malawian cane spirit and lemon juice, as well as sampling Malawi's wonderfully-named Kuche Kuche beer (seeing big, beefy overlander lads wandering up to the bar and ordering a "kootchy kootchy" is always good for a laugh). Seeing as how we were staying two nights in Chitimba, Valdy (our driver) also joined in the drinking, getting us started on shooters (again), and so the night passed quite happily in a mild aloholic haze as we marvelled at the clear view of the moon (reflected in the lake) and stars.

The next day, some of our group decided to be energetic and climb up the hills behind the lake to the Livingstonia mission, and then on up to some waterfalls. I decided to attempt to lie in and catch up on some of the sleep that our early starts had been depriving me of. Unfortunately, I had reckoned without the motorised water pump for the bathroom block, which fired up within hearing range of my tent around 8am. I was not happy... Still, I eventually simply adjourned to the chillout area near the bar, which is all covered by a big thatched roof but not walled off, lay down on one of the futon-like couches and dozed back off again.

I eventually roused myself from my slumber for a spot of swimming late in the morning. A whole bunch of us headed down into the lake with a football, a rugby ball and a frisbee for company, and proceeded to have a bit of a knockaround for a while. All started fairly innocently, but ended up with a few people deliberately aiming throws at the heads of others and other (relatively) good-natured mischief. In one disturbingly funny incident, Paul (our guide) went to retrieve the football from the beach and then proceeded to kick it back into the midst of the game. Unfortunately, Leonie was looking the other way at the time, and it hit her in the small of the back just as she was jumping in the waves. She promptly lost her balance and dropped into the water, looking just the teensiest bit surprised. She was absolutely fine, but you can't script slapstick comedy like that.

After all that unaccustomed exertion, we had a leisurely lunch and settled down to veg out for the afternoon. At this point we also started the unofficial truck Chess championship which continued until we arrived in Cape Town yesterday. These early stages went pretty well for me, as I beat both Tony and Valdy. By late afternoon, the others who'd climbed the hills started drifting back in, and it was time to think about dinner. This was to be my first cooking experience on the trip, as I'd been pressured into going in a "packing team" rather than a "cooking team" within the truck for the first leg of the journey. Post-Zanzi, I transferred onto the cooking roster, so I ended up, along with Jeff and Barry, helping Paul cook a delectable roast dinner on a campfire. I had never even thought of this being possible, as I associate roasts with an oven, but anything appears to be possible with sufficient coals and tinfoil, so we had some beautful roast lamb and chicken, with potatoes, butternut squash stuffed with garlic butter and salad. As you can tell, I've been a long way from starving on the trip.

The latter part of the evening was spent back in the bar, wrestling with Paul's laptop to try and get my MP3 player to download some music to upload on Adela and Roy's iPod (the digital music player has definitely arrived in the backpacking world these days - we've been listening to stuff through an iTrip for much of the way, which has left me rueing Apple's insistence on proprietary technology). Despite much cursing, I didn't manage to get mine to synch up, but we did manage to load some music that the others already had on the laptop onto the iPod, as well as attempting to retrieve some songs off scratched CDs in the bar by ripping them to MP3. Everyone else had crashed out pretty early, though, so there was precious little atmosphere in the bar as I beavered away in the evening light and the wind picked up off the lake. Eventually, it was time for the generator to go off and for me to retire to my tent.

I awoke in the morning to a downpour. Despite the gorgeous previous weather, and our being in the heart of the dry season, Malawi's climate decided it was time to absolutely drench us. This was something of a shock, as the only previous rain I'd had on the trip was a couple of short bursts over on Zanzibar, whereas this was vertical torrential downpour. Worse, due to the ongoing clement weather I had stopped bothering to put a fly-sheet on the tent so, when I came to strike the tent in the morning ahead of our departure, it was all soaked and heavy to put away. I ended up wandering around in my swimmers and a shirt, soaked to the skin as I struggled to pack away on my own (Jon, my tent-buddy, had gotten a room for the two nights along with Leonie and Heetan). Everyone got soaked to a greater or lesser extent, meaning we were not entirely impressed when the rain trickled to a halt about half an hour after we managed to break camp and get on the road. However, it was to return later that morning when we passed through the town of Mzuzu.

Mzuzu was the first sizable settlement we had been through in Malawi, and so was our first real chance to stock up on Malawian cash (this requiring banks and/or ATMs) and to try and check internet. The former was relatively straightforward, the latter rather less so, due to ridiculously slow connection speeds. After this, we headed out to the markets, ready for a quick shopping spree ahead of the night's festivities. There is something of a tradition on Acacia trucks of having at least one serious party in Malawi, which works somewhere along the lines of "Secret Santa".

For those not familiar with the concept, this involved placing the names of everybody on the truck in a hat, and then each person drawing a name at random. The person drawing the name is responsible for acquiring something for the person whose name is drawn. In Secret Santa, this is usually a present, often of a humourous nature. In this case, it was a costume for the person involved. 2 minor catches: first, we were each only allowed to spend 300 Kwacha (about 2.50 USD, or slightly under 1.50 GBP) on the whole outift; second, the outfit had to be for the opposite gender of the intended recipient. To further complicate matters, the rain returned at this point, so we were scuttling around the markets, swathed in raincoats or huddled under umbrellas, frantically haggling to try and get costumes of dodgy provenance for a pittance. All quite amusing, though definitely more so for those buying dresses for the lads than for those, like me, trying to get something approxiomating to male clothing for 1 pound 50p...

After our shopping exploits, and a subsequent lunch adventure involving the hawker stalls at the market (most selling chicken and chips fried in front of you, which was, I must admit, absolutely delicious), it was back on the truck as we rolled further down the lake shore, towards our destination of Kande Beach campsite, near Chinteche. And that will have to wait for the next posting, as this one is ridiculously long already. Watch this space...