Day 50 – T.I.A.

Cape Maclear to Nkhata Bay – Mayoka Village

Today was a test of our endurance – but a test that we think we passed! We were up early for the taxi to Monkey Bay, the start of our bus journey. The plan was to get the 7:15am bus from Monkey Bay to Salima, then change there for the bus to Nkhata Bay, also on Lake Malawi.

When we reached the bus at Monkey Bay at around 6:45am, it was already full! Having no other option we squeezed in sardine style. K scored a “seat” on the side of the driver’s compartment, while M stood further back in the aisle. As we should have known, the bus continued to take on passengers, to our amazement as we didn’t think it was possible to squeeze another body in. However after an hour or so enough people had disembarked for K to get a seat – but M had no such luck!

When the bus arrived at Salima three hours later, the Nkhata Bay bus was already there – and packed even more tightly than the bus we had been on! We decided to wait for the next bus, due to leave in an hour ….. two hours later the bus arrived – and it also was already full!! Once again we had no option but to continue. M had a tough time getting the cases on, while K tried to get a seat. Fortunately a nice Malawi gentleman took pity on K and convinced another man to give her his seat …. M hung out at the front of the bus for about three hours until a seat was available. Some of the passengers were quite interesting … there was one woman with a small child – and a chicken (there were about three chickens on this trip in fact).

The trip wouldn’t have been so bad, but it seemed to stop every few kilometers to take on/off more people. To top it all off, the bus was stopped at police roadblocks twice, where everyone had to get off – we still don’t quite know why!

12 hours after we left Cape Maclear we arrived at Nkhata Bay. We were met by a driver from Mayoka Village (our accommodation), who very slowly took us over the roads recently washed out by a couple of days of rain, bottoming out and sliding a few times.

Once we finally arrived, it was pitch black – there was a power outage. The place is also set on the side of a hill – so we had to lug our cases in the dark down lots of very steep and rough steps …. only to find we had to go back up the same set of steps to our room!

After a candlelit dinner (there was no other light available!) we went to bed. K woke up around midnight – because our bed had an ant’s nest, and K had been sleeping right on top of it! We threw the bedsheet (and a few hundred ants) outside, and we finally managed to get some well deserved sleep. Australia has flies - Africa has ants.

Today was one of our more difficult days, but being the intrepid adventurers that we are, we will carry on, because as a fellow traveller we met earlier in the day told us – "T.I.A" …..This Is Africa!!