Enter Malawi: 10th Aug 09

Today was another long driving day as we crossed the Tanzanian border into Malawi, Africa’s poorest country.

We were both sad to leave Tanzania as we’ve had a fantastic time there – we’ll never forget the Serengeti and Zanzibar or the friendly locals we met.

Malawi is known as the heart of Africa because the locals are meant to be so kind and friendly – strangely our first impressions didn’t really back this up – whereas in Tanzania everywhere we went we had people smiling and waving at us, this didn’t happen as much in Malawi. The people tend to just stare at the truck – maybe they’re not used to tourists so much, or maybe Madonna and her baby buying spree has made them suspicious of us mzungos (that’s the Swahili word for white man).

The landscapes of Malawi are stunning. One 5th of the country is taken up by Lake Malawi, which is 600km long. The rest of the country seems to be mostly dramatic hills and mountains, which we spent hours driving through. I tried to capture the natural drama with photos but they just don’t convey the scale.

On the way we stopped at the roadside a couple of times to buy fruit and veg – the women selling the fruit all wore different coloured clothes and clambered for our cook Henry’s attention offering up tonnes of different types of fruit to him as he sat in the passenger seat of the truck – a very colourful, if hectic sight – some of the ladies nearly started fighting at one point! We asked Henry how he chooses who to buy from when he has 20-odd women clambering for his attention – easy, he just picks the tallest!

We arrived at our campsite on the shore of the lake just in time for sunset and for once Matt managed to sleep through a whole night in the tent. Not me though, I’ve developed a cold – in Africa. Typical!