Day 43 – (Thin walls + loud Americans) x (No Fan + Mosquitos) = Disturbed Sleep

Lilongwe, Mufasa Lodge
  

The temperature in Lilongwe isn’t too bad at this time of year – hot during the day, but there’s patchy cloud cover in the afternoon to take the sting out of the heat, and the evenings are pleasant for sitting outside while having a nice meal. Unfortunately though, Mufasa Lodge takes up the second floor of a city office building, so the walls are very thin - and because of the potential mosquito problem, you can’t leave the windows open at night for ventilation. So a peaceful night’s sleep was pretty much out of the question – which we were fine with at first. But when two Americans girls on the other side of the wall decided to have a long heart to heart discussion about their boy troubles at 6am, any chance we may have had of a decent sleep went out the window!

 

Once we’d recovered from that rude awakening, we headed out for a walk around Lilongwe. A trek to the market was followed by a bit more wandering around.

We did need to stock up on cash, as our next destination didn’t take credit cards and there was no usable ATM in the local town. Back home this wouldn’t be a problem, but in Malawi the largest note available is 500 Kwacha, which is only worth about A$3.15! So after numerous withdrawals (we had up to 6 days of food and accommodation to cash up for) we ended up with the biggest wad of notes we’ve ever seen!