Malawi

 6 August – Chinchete Beach MALAWI

Another country - #12!!! We were up and on the road by 7:30, not another late start like yesterday. About 20min out we passed to Europeans on a tandem towing their kid in a little trailer behind them. We stopped to chat. Turns out they’re French and have been on the road three years aiming to cycle around the world. They flew into Nairobi and are working their way down to Cape Town. So far in East Africa only THREE times have Europeans stopped to chat so they were pleased to see us. They’re finding ‘give me’ hard to handle. On a bicycle you can’t escape.

After that it was an uneventful drive to the border through some very pretty and surprisingly hilly countryside. We even saw tea plantations! We also saw carrots (rare, rare, rare) and bought some, along with a cabbage to make stir fry for supper.

We got to the border to find it closed. Customs staff meeting in progress so no entry or exit for Tanzania. I love it! It wasn’t too bad, we only waited around 20min. Once again all was painless except for finding out that we should have paid a $25 road tax on arrival. We had to pay it on departure instead! Entry into Malawi was also easy. Extremely friendly officials, 20min 75Malwai Kwacha and one carnet later we were done. Malawi is one hour behind Tanzania so we actually finished at the border before we arrived! We started in Tanzania at 12:15 and finished up in Malawi at 12:07

The first 40km in Malawi was good road then we hit the first town of Korongo. Here we ended up in a bank queue behind a group of 2 overland trucks – 28 people! After that we went to buy diesel only to find that there was none in town and that there hadn’t been for three days. It would supposedly arrive that night but who knows, they had probably been saying that every day for the past three days. The next petrol station is 200km South in Mzumu. We were not sure that we would make it so far so we headed back to look for the overland trucks again. We got the driver to give us 10l. We wanted to pay him but he wouldn’t accept so we settled for promising him a beer at the campsite that evening. We did find another 20l from some roadside entrepreneurs later so it would probably have been OK anyway.

So, after an hour of delays we hit the road once again. We finally found ourselves on the road that Liesl had warned us about. It was very bumpy but really, as long as you’re not in too much of a hurry it isn’t too bad. We ended up at Chitimba beach resort with three overland trucks and three landrovers. I would have moved  on but for our promise to buy a beer. We did at least manage to get a hot shower before the crowds arrived. Dinner was excellent – carrot and cabbage stir fry with sweet and sour sauce on rice. It poured with rain in the night but we were OK. Some other people had tents collapsing on them and others had left stuff outside so woke up to a disastrous mess. Our night-time tidy up obsession pays off sometimes!