Malawi - Where Madonna Gets Her Babies

Following a butt numbing 21 hours of truck driving spread over two days, we made our way from Tanzania and into Malawi for what would be a short, three day visit. Unlike Gore, we knew that three days would not be enough time to really get the lay of the land in Malawi, but such is the itinerary that 72 hours was all that we could afford. We spent our entre time when not travelling on the shores of Lake Malawi, the body of water that accounts for over 20% of the total surface area of this land-locked African country. While there were a few water-based activities on offer, including a spot of diving, we opted to chill out on the beach in between quick dips and partaking in the odd liquid refreshment.

Julie Mas and Becks taking their nags for a swim after a ride in the hot sun.

While Mat tended to blogging the good times spent in Tanzania, Caroline and others escaped the confines of the beach camp and headed into the local village armed with a bag of balloons for any wandering children. It didn’t take long for word to spread that there were Mzungus in the mix (Mzungu is the Swahili equivalent of ‘Gringo’, though not as derogatory) and soon a flock of young ones that would not look out of place in a Madonna family portrait followed on Caroline and other’s heals as balloons were dispensed and the village explored.

Lauren, the twitching extrodinaire from Portsmouth, picks a kid for Cheryl Cole.

Mingling with the locals was quite a bit of fun and on the whole, the Malawians are a good humoured bunch. Notable were the numerous young men that flocked the beach and approached us with a wide range of goods and services that could be procured. Each had acquired an English based trading name, and thus all of us came to know and remember that ‘Vin Diesel’ was the man to see for a traditional Malawian chair, ‘Donald Duck’ was keen to trade anything for a new pair of boardies, ‘Spiderman’ was organising a fishing trip for those interested and ‘Chicken Pizza’ could arrange for a wooden hippo to be carved to exact specifications.

On our second day beach-side, we cranked out the best camping based meal of the trip thus far courtesy of having procured a live piggy from the local village. So following an early morning slaughter, we spent an hour or so de-hairing, disembowelling and wiring Harry Plopper for an open fire spit roast. Nine hours after lighting the fire, a crunchy layer of crackling was removed and a temporary carvery installed as the masses enjoyed a fine feast of pork and assorted side dishes.

Given that our time in Malawi was very brief, we thought we’d use this blog to give a little insight into this overlanding malarkey we’re involved in. So the first order of business is to introduce you to Makako, our chariot across the African plains. Makako is a 30 metre lorry with a custom built box on the back that stores all our bags, food, tents, cooking equipment and provides an excellent viewing platform on the long drives. There is a home for everything, and everything has a home. A normal week will usually consist of 3 long days travel between the key destinations and sights on our route from Nairobi to Capetown, and thus far Makako has been chewing up the kilometres with ease.

For the majority of the trip we’re camping, which means we pull into camp and set up home every other day. The camp sites are on the whole pretty sweet, nearly always have a bar and occasionally a swimming pool.

A monkey keeps an eye on the tent pitching.

Some zebra in our campsite.

Once the tents are up, everyone swings into their role for the day which will be one of truck cleaning, cooking, washing up or truck security. A round robin operates so you make your way through each of the tasks, except for a select few who are above such duties and have the elevated status of ‘Fire Boy’. This role is a prestigious, ongoing role with responsibility for fire and water, the lifeblood of the camp, in addition to moving heavy things and looking manly. No doubt you’re all pleased to hear that Geoff and Mat have been designated chief Fire Boys and have mastered the dark art of a slow, hot charcoal burn.

Lead Fire Boy Mat with the 3rd in command, Wingspan/Dan.

Dinners and breakfasts are communal affairs and to date the meals have been top notch despite the tight budget. Breakfasts alternate between hot (eggs, sausages, pancakes, French toast) and cold (cereals and fruit) while dinner has revealed chicken burritos, cabonara, stuffed potatoes and hamburgers along the way. Parents will be pleased to know that everyone is eating well and maintaining good condition.

French toast for breakfast - yes please.

Haggling in an out of town market for fruit and veg.

And to wrap up this instalment, some of you will recall that we reported a significant failure of the autofocus function on the camera lens we have. While we muddle forward using the manual settings on the camera, we thought it would be fun to play a game of ‘Guess the Blurry African Animal’. So there are 5 shots below for you to peruse and identify the African creature depicted... Answers in the comments section.

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

As Sure As Kilimanjaro Rises Like Olympus Over The Serengeti (Toto, 1983)

The second country on out African itinerary was Tanzania where a couple of top national parks and some beach time on the spice island of Zanzibar were the order of play. But first, our African wolf pack grew by seven as we picked up four more Strayians, an Italian, a six foot five inch 18 year old geezer (now affectionately known as ‘Wing-span’) and an American. The total onboard now was 18 plus two crew, though unfortunately we lost Mike the cook at this stage of the trip, meaning we had to fend for ourselves on the cooking front! No sign of chicken nuggets at the local supermache either...

First up was a visit to the Serengeti where hopes were high for a close encounter of the big cat kind. The drive in was a long one covering several hundred kilometres, even though we’d be camping only 75km as the crow flies from where we’d been in the Masai Mara a few days earlier. Unfortunately the location of the border crossing necessitated the long drive round. Before entering the park properly we stopped for lunch at a picnic site where we were warned to look out for the black kite. It wasn’t till one swooped down from the sky and removed a chicken leg that Jeanette was millimetres away from placing in her mouth that we realised the import of the warning. So those not of a bird friendly disposition (including a certain Mrs. Maslin) removed themselves back to the truck for lunch while the rest of us set up to watch the birds swoop on other un-suspecting picnickers, of which there were a many.

We entered the Serengeti in the early evening and slotted straight into game drive mode. Despite the landscape, a limitless and flat horizon of grassland, suggesting otherwise, we soon encountered the usual suspects in the form of Thomsons gazelle, along with a few elephants, giraffe and ostrich. With the sun setting, we arrived into the key game area and soon found ourselves watching on as a leopard, the hardest of the big 5 to spot, consumed her aperitif in the form of a redbuck she’d killed and dragged up the tree. A leopard with a kill is a reasonably rare sight so we were all mightily impressed with the Serengeti’s first offering.

Look closely into the tree and you might see this...

On the way to camp we came across a pride of lions enjoying the last of the evening’s warmth. Parked up, the solitary male lion walked within a few feet of us before stopping and flopping into the grassland for a siesta. We saw nine lions in total including 5 cubs here and, on the drive out, came across a lone redbuck that was mudding itself in the grass, obviously aware of his position in the food chain and the company he was keeping a hundred metres or so away.



Again we camped within the national park so we were warned about straying too far from the tent for a toilet spot. Stories began circling of a lion having taken down a buffalo in the campsite a few years earlier, while reports of hyena near the camp also surfaced. While the first story cannot be corroborated, the second can be verified by a certain Geoffrey Caradus. As Geoff headed out of his tent to pick up some water left by our camp fire, he was stopped as a hyena passed 15 feet in front of him and straight through the campsite. Geoff swiftly turned, headed back to his tent and wished Julie a good night’s sleep.

Probably not the same hyena, but still a hyena.

Our morning game drive in the Serengeti dawned with a great African sunrise. Again, all the game was on display and by mid morning we’d crossed paths with some cheetah and in doing so ticked off the big cat sightings. Again the lions were plentiful and completely at ease with the presence of safari jeeps. We weren’t lucky enough to come across a lion eating breakfast, but we did spend some time with a large pride of 15 lions roaming the plains in search of lunch.

Our next game drive was in the neighbouring Ngorongoro Crater national park, an ancient volcanic crater where the grasslands are bordered in all directions by a 300 metre high crater wall. By mid morning, we were knee deep in lion again as they took refuge in the shade offered by our safari jeeps. Wildebeest and zebra were never far from view and another five hundy photos were taken in short order.

Unfortunately for us, it was towards the end of this game drive that we started having issues with the rather expensive camera lens we purchased for the trip. We’re not sure what happened, but the automatic focus function has gone on it and for the last part of the drive and the remainder of the trip we’ll be going full manual on the photography front (no one goes full manual and wins a photography award!). We’re well covered by the warranty but limited in access to a replacement lens for some time...

Leaving the Ngorongoro Crater behind us, thoughts turned to the looming unification of two African trucks. With 18 in our group, we would be joining with 10 others who had been travelling a different route which took them to Uganda and Rwanda for some gorilla trekking. We’d be leaving Tito (leader), Dixon (driver) and Kifazu (truck) to join a new truck and new crew, and speculation was rife about the 13 we’d be joining. Unlike the reunification of Germany though, a bit more planning had gone into bringing down the wall and a pork and lamb spit roast ensured conditions were excellent for breaking ice with ‘the others’. By the end of the night we’d concluded all were relatively normal except for two who thankfully were at the end of their trip and would depart at first light.

So with a full complement of 28 onboard, we headed east through two days of travelling towards Dar Es Salaam and our ferry to Zanzibar. Upon arrival in Zanzibar, we headed out on a spice tour with some locals where we learned everything we needed to know about cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, lemon grass and anything else spicy. Having done a similar tour in India only a few weeks earlier, we were well placed to ace all the questions and demonstrate a high level of spice awareness. To cap off the trip, one of the spice boys scaled a 40m palm tree to knock down some coconuts for us whilst we were presented with different woven flax accessories – hand bags and rings for the girls, hat and ties for the boys.

Our first night in Zanzibar was spent in Stone Town where we all headed to the night market to sample the BBQ’d treats on offer. The seafood was plentiful though a little overcooked, but Caroline’s personal favourite was the Zanzibari pizza, which is essentially a pizza come omelette thrown together on a hot plate. For Mat, the Banana, chocolate and condensed milk pizza was worthy of Greg Wallace’s (UK Master Chef) signature saying, “Sweet, chocolaty, well balanced with the banana - I could eat that all day”.

The next day a few of us delayed our travel to the north coast of Zanzibar to take in the All Blacks 4th Bledisloe Cup match. We should have seen the result coming when we settled in to watch the first half at a hotel bar that didn’t serve alcohol, had the game commentary in French and had the kind of TV reception you’d expect in the Chatham Islands during a southerly blast. We tolerated the first half before sprinting along a beach to another bar to take in the second half. A tough loss for the ABs, but thankfully the Strayians with us were as shocked as we were and held back on the banter.

To the north of Zanzibar, we holed up in some beach bungalows and spent three relaxing days beachside. White sand, blue skies and cool and clean water greeted us and provided a great contrast to our first 10 or so days in Africa. While the weather didn’t always behave itself, we all spent a day snorkelling out on a coral reef and, on another day, Team Caradai and us took the opportunity to go diving. Both the diving and the snorkelling were world class. Our last night turned into quite a celebration as Wing-span celebrated his 19th birthday which allowed the older of us, of which there are more than a few, to play big brother and relive our own youth.

Our departure from Zanzibar was always going to be a little up in the air as we’d coincided our travels with the Tanzanian elections. There are two main parties in Tanzania split mainly along Muslim and Christian lines, where the Christian dominated CCM party has been in power since independence, thanks largely in recent time to some dodgy election results. Thus there were some concerns that a repeat of the last election results may lead to some violence, especially in Zanzibar which is predominantly Muslim.

In the end, the ruling party won again but by a very slim margin (obviously having learned from the last election that if the result is to be fixed, at least make it close) and immediately pledged to initiate a Government of unity with the CCF, the Muslim dominated political party. So while our departure from Zanzibar was slow, it was due to mass street parties as opposed to violence. With the election behind us, and the departure of 4 people we head further south towards Malawi where we might find ourselves purchasing some traditional Malawian wood carvings or taking Madonna’s lead and adopting a child. With a crew of 24 together until Vic Falls, we’re looking forward to a couple weeks more of travels with good people and having some good times along the way.