Despite being one of the poorest countries in the poorest continent, Malawi is known as the Warm Heart of Africa for its friendly population. Having got through Mozambique slightly faster than I anticipated, I had a bit of time to slow down and see the place, and hopefully finally get to see some hippos...
After a couple of solid days of riding, my bum was sending pointed suggestions to my brain that it was time for a rest, so following another relatively painless border crossing I headed for Lake Malawi. Taking a recommendation from my guidebook, I set my sights on Monkey Bay. A small, sleepy town on at the southern end of the lake, Monkey Bay was a popular spot for travellers and had a couple of hostels listed. Having come from West Africa where backpacker type places were rare to non-existent, it was a novelty to be in a place where there were several to choose from. I found one in its own little cove with a beach and a shipwreck, and I set up camp.
The hostel I was staying at was run by a retired British/South African lawyer called Riki. Sometimes in life you come across people who make you realise how little you have achieved (or more positively, what one person is capable of doing); Riki is definitely one of those. She was actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement, helped to draft the new South African constitution, flew a rescue mission into Rwanda during the genocide, and in her sixties has adopted a young Malawian orphan. Needless to say, she had some great stories. My time at the hostel was pretty lazy; a walk around coast to a fishing village, a couple of trips into town, some minor motorbike maintenance and quite a lot of sitting around and reading. After a few days of relaxing, my plan was to head north along the lake, but first there was the matter of the hippos.
A couple of hours south of Monkey Bay is Liwonde, a town on the Shire River which is teeming with hippos. Having failed to spot them in both Gambia and Cote d'Ivoire, I figured it was third time lucky. I arrived early afternoon to a lodge on the river, where coincidentally I bumped into Riki who was in court down there fighting on behalf of the lodge owner against the shady Dutch owner of a rival lodge who was trying to claim ownership of the public road and choke the other one out of business (don't worry, Riki had a knockout blow ready that was going to halt him in his tracks). The next morning I was up at sunrise and out on a small canoe with a guide, searching for the hippos that I had been listening to all night. We didn't have to go far; as soon as we got out onto the main river there were pods every few hundred yards. Being essentially silent we were able to get really close, and I got some great pictures - definitely worth the wait.
From Liwonde, next stop was Nkhata Bay. Also on the lake and also popular with travellers, I didn't get there until the evening and I crashed straight out to sleep. Next day though I was feeling more sociable, and for only the second time on the trip found a gang to hang out with. Max, Astrid, Bekka and Jason were a great crowd to hang out with. Alex was an obnoxious Aussie bore, though I may be only saying that because she refused point blank to ever read this blog. We spent a couple of days eating, drinking and swimming (stuff you do on a lake), though the highlight was the fishing. Max and I bought some fishing line and hooks, and from a rented canoe spent the day trying to catch anything we could. After a few hours where the only thing we had caught was a mild sunburn, we finally got lucky. Given that I caught one 7cm fish, and Max caught two, we were both ridiculously happy about it. Tiny things please tiny minds.
From Nkhata bay, Jason, Bekka, Alex and I were all heading up to Mushroom Farm, a lodge on the edge of the Nyika plateau. People had warned me that the road up was bad, but on the website it said that you don't need a 4wd to get there. As if! From the main highway, the road wound for 10km steeply up the edge of the mountains, with hairpin bends and broken rocky roads the whole way. The bike coped admirably (the only small tumble coming from a lapse of concentration on my part), and in the end I arrived way ahead of the others. The view from the top was stunning, and the lodge itself had been set up to take maximum advantage, with cliff edge restaurant and camping spots.
From the lodge we did a trek out to some waterfalls, with a stop off to dip our toes in some pools at the top. On the way back we had a singalong to some power ballads (well, mainly Alex and I did), and continued this in a little local restaurant we stopped at for lunch. In fact, we'd had about an hour of solid gold hits when Bekka finally broke and begged us to 'play some normal music'. On the way back from the restaurant the chat descended into a furious argument about whether a cheesecake was a cake or something else (it'a clearly not a cake). Back in the lodge, I introduced the residents to the card game 'pop'. A staple part of Christmases on my mum's side of the family, pop is a ridiculously simple game to play, almost entirely luck, but an awful lot of fun. Players have five cards and five tokens (pennies traditionally but anything will do). The aim is to 'pop' the person before you by laying a card of the same value (suit is irrelevant). If you lay a five and I lay a five, I shout pop and you have to put one of your tokens in the middle. However, if the person after me also has a five then they lay it and shout 'pop pop' and I have to put two tokens in. And so on. It is so simple, but fierce rivalries and vendettas appear almost instantly making it hugely entertaining. (I won twice in a row if you want to know, the second time with a perfectly timed 'pop pop' followed by finger guns because I am a great sportsman like that).
Also staying at the lodge was Rhys, a fellow British biker touring in a big loop from Kenya down to Malawi and back up. Ignoring accusations that we had a biker bromance going on, we planned to ride together for a couple of days across the Nyika plateau, but the night before we were set to leave disaster struck. For the first time ever on the trip (including after it was dropped in a river in Guinea) the bike wouldn't start! Worrying times. I tried all of the tricks I had learned so far - checked the injector, the spark plug, the fuel lines and fuel pump, but nothing I could see was wrong. Rather than hold Rhys up he headed out, and I had to admit defeat and call in a local mechanic. Luckily he was familiar with big bikes and diagnosed valve clearance as the issue and deftly sorted it out.
From Mushroom Farm the gang parted ways, with Jason and Alex heading for Zambia and me, Bekka and a few other folks heading for Tanzania. The rest of the Tanzania bunch set off at 7 in the morning, while I had a lazy start and didn't leave until 10.30. Despite that, I caught them up at the border (they got held up at a police checkpoint, suckers), and we crossed en masse into Tanzania.
After a couple of solid days of riding, my bum was sending pointed suggestions to my brain that it was time for a rest, so following another relatively painless border crossing I headed for Lake Malawi. Taking a recommendation from my guidebook, I set my sights on Monkey Bay. A small, sleepy town on at the southern end of the lake, Monkey Bay was a popular spot for travellers and had a couple of hostels listed. Having come from West Africa where backpacker type places were rare to non-existent, it was a novelty to be in a place where there were several to choose from. I found one in its own little cove with a beach and a shipwreck, and I set up camp.
The hostel I was staying at was run by a retired British/South African lawyer called Riki. Sometimes in life you come across people who make you realise how little you have achieved (or more positively, what one person is capable of doing); Riki is definitely one of those. She was actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement, helped to draft the new South African constitution, flew a rescue mission into Rwanda during the genocide, and in her sixties has adopted a young Malawian orphan. Needless to say, she had some great stories. My time at the hostel was pretty lazy; a walk around coast to a fishing village, a couple of trips into town, some minor motorbike maintenance and quite a lot of sitting around and reading. After a few days of relaxing, my plan was to head north along the lake, but first there was the matter of the hippos.
A couple of hours south of Monkey Bay is Liwonde, a town on the Shire River which is teeming with hippos. Having failed to spot them in both Gambia and Cote d'Ivoire, I figured it was third time lucky. I arrived early afternoon to a lodge on the river, where coincidentally I bumped into Riki who was in court down there fighting on behalf of the lodge owner against the shady Dutch owner of a rival lodge who was trying to claim ownership of the public road and choke the other one out of business (don't worry, Riki had a knockout blow ready that was going to halt him in his tracks). The next morning I was up at sunrise and out on a small canoe with a guide, searching for the hippos that I had been listening to all night. We didn't have to go far; as soon as we got out onto the main river there were pods every few hundred yards. Being essentially silent we were able to get really close, and I got some great pictures - definitely worth the wait.
From Liwonde, next stop was Nkhata Bay. Also on the lake and also popular with travellers, I didn't get there until the evening and I crashed straight out to sleep. Next day though I was feeling more sociable, and for only the second time on the trip found a gang to hang out with. Max, Astrid, Bekka and Jason were a great crowd to hang out with. Alex was an obnoxious Aussie bore, though I may be only saying that because she refused point blank to ever read this blog. We spent a couple of days eating, drinking and swimming (stuff you do on a lake), though the highlight was the fishing. Max and I bought some fishing line and hooks, and from a rented canoe spent the day trying to catch anything we could. After a few hours where the only thing we had caught was a mild sunburn, we finally got lucky. Given that I caught one 7cm fish, and Max caught two, we were both ridiculously happy about it. Tiny things please tiny minds.
From Nkhata bay, Jason, Bekka, Alex and I were all heading up to Mushroom Farm, a lodge on the edge of the Nyika plateau. People had warned me that the road up was bad, but on the website it said that you don't need a 4wd to get there. As if! From the main highway, the road wound for 10km steeply up the edge of the mountains, with hairpin bends and broken rocky roads the whole way. The bike coped admirably (the only small tumble coming from a lapse of concentration on my part), and in the end I arrived way ahead of the others. The view from the top was stunning, and the lodge itself had been set up to take maximum advantage, with cliff edge restaurant and camping spots.
From the lodge we did a trek out to some waterfalls, with a stop off to dip our toes in some pools at the top. On the way back we had a singalong to some power ballads (well, mainly Alex and I did), and continued this in a little local restaurant we stopped at for lunch. In fact, we'd had about an hour of solid gold hits when Bekka finally broke and begged us to 'play some normal music'. On the way back from the restaurant the chat descended into a furious argument about whether a cheesecake was a cake or something else (it'a clearly not a cake). Back in the lodge, I introduced the residents to the card game 'pop'. A staple part of Christmases on my mum's side of the family, pop is a ridiculously simple game to play, almost entirely luck, but an awful lot of fun. Players have five cards and five tokens (pennies traditionally but anything will do). The aim is to 'pop' the person before you by laying a card of the same value (suit is irrelevant). If you lay a five and I lay a five, I shout pop and you have to put one of your tokens in the middle. However, if the person after me also has a five then they lay it and shout 'pop pop' and I have to put two tokens in. And so on. It is so simple, but fierce rivalries and vendettas appear almost instantly making it hugely entertaining. (I won twice in a row if you want to know, the second time with a perfectly timed 'pop pop' followed by finger guns because I am a great sportsman like that).
Also staying at the lodge was Rhys, a fellow British biker touring in a big loop from Kenya down to Malawi and back up. Ignoring accusations that we had a biker bromance going on, we planned to ride together for a couple of days across the Nyika plateau, but the night before we were set to leave disaster struck. For the first time ever on the trip (including after it was dropped in a river in Guinea) the bike wouldn't start! Worrying times. I tried all of the tricks I had learned so far - checked the injector, the spark plug, the fuel lines and fuel pump, but nothing I could see was wrong. Rather than hold Rhys up he headed out, and I had to admit defeat and call in a local mechanic. Luckily he was familiar with big bikes and diagnosed valve clearance as the issue and deftly sorted it out.
From Mushroom Farm the gang parted ways, with Jason and Alex heading for Zambia and me, Bekka and a few other folks heading for Tanzania. The rest of the Tanzania bunch set off at 7 in the morning, while I had a lazy start and didn't leave until 10.30. Despite that, I caught them up at the border (they got held up at a police checkpoint, suckers), and we crossed en masse into Tanzania.
