🇲🇼 Malawi 🇲🇼

We had our earliest wake-up so far for our travel day to Malawi. So early that we were the first people to arrive at Livingstone Airport. So early too that Tom had to find somebody in a hi-visibility jacket to see if there was any coffee. With coffee eventually found, we boarded the smallest plane of our lives for our first flight, so close that we could tap our pilot on the shoulder if we wanted to. We eventually arrived in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital a few hours later after a quick stop in Lusaka.

We were met at Lilongwe by Andrew from Anake Taxi Services, our driver to Nkhata Bay, on the shores of Lake Malawi. He even had a sign for us at arrivals. This doesn’t happen to us very often and so was very exciting. We chatted to Andrew about Malawi education and healthcare (of course!) and learnt lots about the political picture in Malawi as we drove through hill top towns and villages. We were struck by how alive Malawi felt, the palpable energy of the people we saw and the wonderful spirit there seemed to be in each of the communities we passed. Our drive was long, but Andrew and some slightly weird custard creams for snacks made for good company.

We arrived in Nkhata Bay late in the evening to Aqua Africa, our base for the night. First stop was to have a taste of local Chambo (fish) at one of the cafes in town. To accompany the fish, Kelsey chose the ‘special’ beer which turned out to be a bottle of ‘special brew.’ Whilst this wouldn’t be Kelsey’s drink of choice at home – very far from red wine – it was a refreshing end to a long day of travel.

The main reason for our visit to Nkhata Bay was to pick up the “famous in Malawi” Ilala Ferry. This cargo / passenger ferry travels the length and breadth of Lake Malawi once a week, a vital method of connection between the various ports and villages. It’s famous for being late and having a fairly blasé approach to time generally, so much so that the ferry has been known to arrive even a day late. Is something still late if it’s more than a day late? Anyway, we scouted out opinion on when the ferry would arrive with locals and estimations / guesses ranged from 6pm that evening to 4am in the morning – a healthy ten hour window. Effectively, this told us that no one really knew and so we whiled away our day in Nkhata Bay visiting shops and cafes all along this port town. Everyone was super friendly and we had chats with lots of locals who were as intrigued about our Ilala Trip as we were.

Eventually after a really tasty dinner of chicken satay at Aqua Africa, it was time for us to board around 8pm. We arrived at the port to a flurry of activity. Boxes of fruit, bags of maize, chickens and goats were being passed from person to person to take their place on the boat. We joined them and tried to find somebody who looked in charge. This was difficult. Eventually we found a waiter in the restaurant who kindly helped us to find our cabin, ticking our name off a simple printed list, typed in Times New Roman. There was no need to download an app to find a QR code or e-ticket for this ferry ride. Everything was simple but it worked. We had an explore of the ship and joined fellow travellers in the bar on the top-deck for another ‘special’ beer. Eventually after some hours watching the loading process, the ship gave some toots of its horn, some final cars and people hurried to load some things on and we sailed away into the night.

Cabin 3 was lovely (see pictures) but located directly above what we think was the anchor. A few hours later, after some in and out sleep, the ship made its first stop at Chizumulu which meant lots of clinking and clanking of the anchor below our heads and the start of the reloading and unloading process. It took a good four hours for all of this to complete – apparently this is quick on Ilala time – and we eventually set sail for our stop, Likoma Island. We arrived at 6am the following morning. The lake and island looked beautiful. A crowd of smaller boats gathered around the Ilala ready to help escort us all off. We resorted to throwing our bags down into one of the smaller ships and jumping down ourselves, holding the shoulders of fellow travellers to keep ourselves upright. This was a good test of our core strength. The boat stuttered to shore and we finally made it to dry land after a little wade through water. We couldn’t find our taxi man Gilbert and as we no doubt looked a little lost, a Likoma island shopkeeper took us under her wing and found us a lift to Mango Drift Backpackers – our home for the next four nights.

Mango Drift was beautiful – a line of huts directly on the beach overlooking Lake Malawi. We spent our time here away from it all reading, playing Monopoly Deal, SUP’ing (Stand Up Paddle Boarding), playing ‘Shithead’ with some hostellers and kayaking across the lake. We took daily wanders into the local town for some chambo, meeting lots of smiley people along our route. We concluded that Kelsey was a natural at SUP’ing, Tom less so.

We were struck by how laid-back everything felt on the island – island time was definately a thing. We needed some WiFi on one day to do some travel planning. With no WiFi at Mango Drift we were told to talk to someone in ‘the second town’ called Davie because ‘he knew a lot about computers.’ When we asked how we could find Davie, we were told that everyone would know who he was. Sure enough, after a little search and some help from locals, we found WiFi. We were soon surrounded one by one by lots of children, keen to learn some English. With no teaching qualifications and an eager crowd, the best we could muster was for us to name different foods. Our new friends copied and repeated, mimicking our California / London and Coventry / London accents. A very impressive feat. The following day, we met more children as our kayaks were commandeered by a group of kids who had swam out to us and sat on top of our kayaks as we made our way to shore. We concluded from these experiences that Malawians genuinely must be some of the friendliest in the world.

After a recharge on Likoma, we made preparations for Ilala Ferry – Round 2 back to Nkhata Bay. We took a small boat out to Ilala from the shore, with people and goats for company again and took our seats on top deck. As the sun descended, Kelsey introduced some of our Malawi friends to the rules of Monopoly Deal. We spent our time trading Old Kent Roads and Mayfair’s reminding us of London. Our fellow players were rather cut throat and we found ourselves towards the bottom of the leaderboard.

After a one night stop over in Nkhata Bay, we left early the following morning bound for our next hill top destination – Mushroom Farm in Livingstonia. Our brilliant driver, Frank, carefully navigated us up a bumpy 10km road where we found a series of cabins nestled in the hillside, overlooking Lake Malawi and the Great Rift Valley. Mushroom Farm quickly became a firm favourite with its cooler air, great veggie food and spectacular views.

After lots of sea and travelling, we were ready for a big stretch of the legs and booked onto a guided walk / scramble to Malawi’s largest waterfall. Our guide MacDonald met us early the next morning, leading us down the mountain to a spectacular view of the Falls. We were joined by Marissa and Ludi, who were at the start of a really exciting trip cycling around Malawi.

The peace and serenity of the waterfall was rudely interrupted by a text message from Lloyd’s Bank telling us that we needed to check something urgently on our account before 2.30pm. This meant that we needed WiFi and relatively quickly. We informed MacDonald of our problem, but this was a man with a plan – numerous plans in fact. MacDonald told us that he had two friends “who knew a lot about computers” – a man named George who worked in Livingstonia Hospital and a man named Harry who worked at the University of Livingstonia. He felt that they could help and so we hiked up hill for another few miles in search of George and Harry.

We found George first who happened to be a Data Manager in Livingstonia Hospital. We visited him in his office and soon found ourselves in deep conversation with him about the hospital and it’s services, it’s Outpatients Department, it’s data, it’s patient safety record (not quite but nearly.) The topics went on and we became fairly enthralled. It turned out that on the WiFi front however, George couldn’t help us. MacDonald looked confused as to why we looked so happy in failing with our WiFi quest. We explained to him that being able to visit the hospital was (weirdly) a real highlight for us.

Still in search, we trekked further up the hill – it was raining now – to find Harry at the University. We arrived to the University in exam season, students nervously walking around the very impressive neatly lawned campus. We toured various offices and rooms looking for Harry, MacDonald explaining what we needed. We visited the admissions office, the examinations office. the library, a boys dormitory and eventually an IT room. Harry was nowhere to be found but we were rescued by two very kind gentlemen who lent Kelsey a laptop to check what we needed. With checks done – Kelsey and Tom (1) – Lloyd’s Bank (0). After our 13 mile trek wandering to waterfalls and WiFi we were ready for wine, good food and planning our next few days with Ludi and Marissa.

We awoke on our final day in Malawi ready for another taxi ride and border. We were sad to wave goodbye to a country that had taken us under its wing and vowed on our journey down the mountain to come again one day. Frank returned and took us down the mountain, around 21 hairpin bends in his c.2000 Toyota Corolla, expertly navigating a road so bumpy stops needed to be made to heave rocks out of the way. A little nip of a rock meant we had a stop on the way down to fix a bumper. Frank, unphased, proceeded north where our journey became rockier – at least metaphorically.

Following the recent Malawian elections, there has been considerable dispute over the authenticity of the election result. This has sparked some protest at the establishment, including at police check points, causing some upset on the roads with traffic being halted. As we drove north, we heard lively chanting and encountered more trucks piled with people and flags. We slowed to a halt as the only road north was completely blockaded. The genius of Frank quickly became clear as he invited one of the leader-looking protestors into the car. In fact, this man happened to be the Chairman of this particular local protest. With power now in the vehicle, we sailed on past the blockade in the Toyota Corolla, Frank pumping his fist in the air to join with the cause. We dropped the Chairman a little further up the road after he explained to us what was going on.

Malawi, as all countries we had visited before it, had been a remarkably peaceful, friendly and objectively safe place to visit. We didn’t let the final few hours on Malawi soil taint our view. With clear roads ahead of us (thanks only to Frank) we made our way to the border. We waited at the border for about 30 minutes until our visa had been processed (code for someone writing freehand in our passports) and made our first steps onto Tanzanian soil.