Day 42 – Not all buses are equal

Lusaka (Zambia) to Lilongwe (Malawi), Mufasa Backpackers

Our 4.30 am taxi was never going to arrive, no one would do a pickup at that time of the morning for only $5. Therefore, the nightwatchman at our Inn offered to carry our bags and escort us through the streets to the bus station, which was only about a kilometer away. The streets were pretty empty though so I wonder if the escort was really needed?

At the bus station we had to pay for our luggage to go on – no one told us that yesterday when we bought the tickets, fortunately we had just enough Zambian Kwachas to cover it.

The bus was cramped – five seats to a row instead of the four in our bus to Lusaka, and limited leg room and internal luggage space. We were also treated to twenty minutes of sermon and prayers before we left (that would have done K’s Auntie V proud), and during the trip we were subjected to endless videos of Malawi Christian songs played at full volume. M is now reciting choruses from Malawi videos in his sleep, too bad we have no idea what any of it means!

At Chipata (the Zambian side of the border) we were told to get off the bus as we had to change buses, and the change would take only 10 minutes. 40 minutes later the bus arrived, this one was only half full so at least we had some room to move. It’s worth mentioning that it only took about 8 hours to get to Chipata – so the overall journey ended up being about 12 hours, not the 18 we’d been originally told – K was very relieved!

The border crossing itself must have taken an hour and a half or more. First there was the usual paperwork – exit from Zambia and entry to Malawi. At the Malawi side we waited for the bus to come through – it didn’t come, so we walked back, and as soon as we got on it drove to where we had been waiting and everyone else got off!  We were then told to get off the bus, then on again, then off while some sort of inspection took place, then on again. At one point one of our bags was unloaded, left on the ground for 10 minutes, then loaded on again. We have no idea what it was all about, we finally got underway and then we were stopped at a police roadblock for a passport inspection. After all that we finally reached Mufasa Lodge in the heart of Old Town in Lilongwe around 6pm.

Also a quick update, you may have noticed that we've uploaded a few more sets of photos, including South Africa and Zimbabwe/Zambia. We have quite a few videos yet to upload, but our internet access has generally been limited and quite slow, so videos will take a bit more time - we'll let you know when there's more to see!