Water, Water Everywhere…A Soggy End to Malawi

The whole northern coastal area around Lake Malawi was a scene of devastation with roads and bridges washed away in floods and homes and lodges destroyed. People here are used to dealing with challenging environmental conditions but El Nino was making life particularly difficult this year.

Our plans had had to change but we had nothing to complain about in comparison to what the local people were dealing with. Even so we decided to head back inland away from the floods and keep our feet on firmer ground.

Or so we thought!

Our first stop was back to the town of Mzuzu to stock up on food and fuel. A local man offered to help source fresh fruit and vegetables for us and we ended up with some lovely sweet bananas and green peppers. We even bought some peas which would have been a treat but we were sloppy with our food planning and ended up wasting them.

From there we headed inland towards the Vwasa Marsh Wildlife Reserve. Now you may think that there was a clue in the name as to the potential for disaster with all this rain!

The drive from Mzuzu to the town of Rhumpi was slow going but easy enough and incredibly green

For the moment the sky was beautiful and calm with huge storm clouds hanging motionless in the air

But as we approached Rhumpi things started to change – the clouds lowered and darkened and the rain started

It got heavier and heavier until we started to hear tinny sounds pelting down onto Henry´s roof. I couldn´t believe it, we were in the middle of Malawi and it was hailing!

At around about this point the road through Rhumpi started to run alongside the Rukuru River and the river was in full flood. We strained out of the windows to see the tumultuous rapids hurtling across rocks, careering over the banks, an awe-inspiring, dangerous, seething mass just a little way beneath us.

We turned a corner and were faced with a bridge across the water. The river was surging and broiling around the bridge, lapping up over the edge

The noise of the rapids was deafening

We drove over it a little concerned that there may be no way back in a few days time. I checked the map and convinced myself that there were other routes available but we couldn´t be sure whether any of those routes would be any better. Ideally we would not need to come back this way but if we´ve learnt one thing on our travels it´s never to assume anything.

But the coastal road was gone and the M7 was a mud slide, we were running out of options so in the end we carried on.

The road got wetter and bumpier

But eventually, after another two hours, we arrived at the gates of Vwasa. By this time the rain was biblical. I leapt out of the Landrover and took no more than five paces into the Vwasa reception to book us in – by the time I got there I was drenched.

I told the lady in the office that we had come to camp for a day or two. She shook her head sadly – the camp was not open. My heart sank, in the two hours since Rhumpi we had not seen anywhere else even vaguely likely as a place to stay for the night and it was already 4pm.

She called over a senior ranger and told him we had hoped to camp. He told me that the chalets and kitchen needed renovation and were not open but we were welcome to pitch up for the night if we wanted to. I suggested we went to look before deciding and he was happy for us to try.

We drove slowly through mud and puddles, following his directions to the campsite

We were getting deeper and deeper into water and by the time we turned the corner into the campsite itself we were faced with rather more than a place needing renovation!

The whole place was under water….

We turned around and started driving back down the road towards Rhumpi not entirely sure what our next move was going to be. But finding somewhere to stay was not going to be our main challenge right now.

In the half an hour since we had driven down this road towards Vwasa the rain had come down so hard that the entire area was flooding. Water was not just pouring out of the sky, it was also pouring down the roads and tracks from the higher ground into the marshy swamps

What had been puddles on our way in were now rivers cascading down the road

We pulled over to let a local car come through one of the deeper lakes and could only watch in horror as the flowing water ripped its entire front bumper off.

We were not in that sort of danger with Henry, he is more than capable of dealing with a bit of flooding, our main issues were trying to stay on the road and seeing through the windscreen

Slowly, slowly, we made our way back up the road. Bit by bit the rain eased off and the road started to dry out – or at least not get any wetter!

With James driving I was searching for somewhere to stay for the night and in the end our only option seemed to be going all the way back to Rhumpi and checking into the Earth Bags hotel – a local but quite historic hotel that allowed camping in their grounds. The hotel was built from earth bags in the early 20^th century and the construction fascinated James.

When we arrived the place was full of local people sitting around the broken banks of the flooded river. They were quiet with just a general murmer going round

The manager of the hotel was friendly and welcoming. He showed us where we could camp but also showed us a room we could stay in. We decided to camp but use the toilet and shower in the room

As we chatted he told us that all the people were there because a local police officer had thrown himself into the river a few days ago and they were trying to find his body. The people were waiting for news and paying their respects to the grieving family. It all seemed very sad.

As we prepared to set up for the night a group of young girls appeared on the other side of the wall giggling and pointing at us. We lifted Henry´s roof and a gasp went up. I looked out of the window and smiled at them. They called out excitedly.

A few minutes later I got our chairs out and started assembling them. I could hear a muttering of confusion and debate from the girls. I looked over and smiled again and asked them what they thought I was making. They giggled and shook their heads. As I put the frame together and started pulling the canvas over it to make the first chair they gasped again and shouted in amazement.

Eventually we were all set up and much less interesting so the girls left and an hour or so later the rest of the people drifted away back to their homes for the evening. We spent a peaceful and comfortable night there grateful for the warm welcome and dry lodgings.

Although even here we could see the floods – much of the hotel grounds were under water

Having been forced to give up on Vwasa our next try was to be the Nyika National Park, considered to be a beautiful place but difficult to get to with bad roads. Before we set off I sent them a message checking that the roads were passable and their campsite was accessible. They replied quickly saying that everything was fine.

And it was – in fact it was more than fine. The journey there was long, slow and bumpy but we were driving up into the high plateaux, leaving the wet marshes behind.

When we arrived we were exhausted and it had just started to rain again – big blobs of water sloshing down onto the windscreen obscuring our view and making our hearts sink yet again

We were also now 2,300 meters up and it was cold – properly cold! We quickly searched out our fleeces from the bottom of our clothes cupboards, untouched for months of hot and humid weather, and dashed from Henry to the undercover area where we could sit and wait out the storm

After about an hour everything dried up and the sun came out. We looked out at the view and couldn´t help but agree that it was as beautiful as its reputation held

Shortly after the rain had stopped the camp host, Mattao, arrived and made us a roaring fire

We sat and chatted to him for a while until it started to get dark. We then made dinner as he headed back down to the staff quarters for the night.

Our evening was wonderful – the only sounds we heard were the gentle chomping of antelope, the swooshing of bats and the breeze. It was so cold we had to wrap blankets around our legs and there were no bugs! We had found another slice of heaven.

The next morning our guide, Blessing, arrived to take us on our walk. It was tough going with uneven ground, high grasses and a few patches which were waterlogged and required expert guidance to navigate across

We spent three lovely hours walking across the plateau where we saw some beautiful flowers hidden in amongst the grasses

A magic mushroom

And got incredibly close to zebra, eland and roan

Blessing also told us all about the pine forests which were planted by the British a hundred years or so ago. Apparently they had planned to cover the entire plateau in the trees as a commercial venture but the difficulties outweighed the benefits so they had given up. And lucky that they had as the pine is invasive and needs careful management to stop it spreading everywhere. In a different world this whole part of the country could have been turned into one big pine plantation.

We walked for hours, enjoying the beautiful scenery and were enthralled by a large herd of Eland that seemed very relaxed by our presence

Before finally heading off over the crest of the hill and out of sight

Just as we were arriving back at the campsite it started to rain again but before it got too heavy we were safely tucked up undercover, cold but dry and happy.

That evening we sat by the roaring fire Mattao had made for us and stared up at the stars. But it was not all peaceful and quiet – James went to the toilet at around 8pm with the torch and caught a pair of yellow eyes looking at him from the trees. He called me over and we walked closer to investigate. We spent the next 20 minutes watching a leopard watching us – seeing his shadow crouch down as we approached, then slowly creeping to one side and eventually disappearing. Absolutely magical.

We had a good plan for the next day – drive three hours back to Rhumpi and stay at the Earth Bags hotel again then head up to the Mushroom Farm the day after, nice and relaxed, two easy days. But we also thought we might decide to go all the way to the Mushroom Farm in one go and just stop for a couple of hours at Earth Bags for lunch to break the journey up.

In the end our day was neither relaxed nor easy! We arrived at Rhumpi early enough to want to carry on to the Mushroom Farm but the town had another visitor that was apparently rather more important than us – the Malawian President!

The people were quite excited and the military presence was very high. Roads were closed off and the hotel was inaccessible, as were many other places. We ended up stopping only long enough to fill up with fuel, pump our tyres back up to road pressures and grab a couple of breakfast bars and apples out of the fridge.

Even this wouldn´t have been too much of a problem as it was only supposed to be another 1.5 hours to the Mushroom Farm, however the sat nav wanted to take us the long way round so, as navigator, I was tasked with keeping an eye on Google and finding the right turn onto the faster road. Sadly we were too busy chatting at the time and I missed it – only by 2km and we could easily have turned back but James didn´t want to run the gauntlet of the police checkpoint we had just passed so we carried on.

Not the best decision we have ever made! We were already tired and needed a break from driving and now, rather than a nice, smooth tar road up to the campsite we were on a bumpy, slow dirt road that criss-crossed up into the mountains and then back down again before following the Lake for a while to meet the perilous switch-backs up to the Mushroom Farm that some of you may remember from when we first entered Malawi before Christmas.

I took over the driving for a while but when we reached the start of the switch backs I handed back over to James – narrow, dirt roads, big ruts and shear drops down the mountain are not my thing!

As we crawled slowly up the path I dug my nails into my seat and wished with all my heart that I had paid just a little more attention to Google!

When we finally arrived we found to our surprise that not only were the French couple from the Mzuzu campsite there but also their friend who was cycling through Africa and the couple with their son from the Makuzi beach campsite. Having seen so few other travellers for many months it was like a small reunion and was in fact the start of our new community – we all travelled along together for a few weeks and enjoyed the company of like-minded people

We were in the very north of Malawi now, heading towards the Tanzanian border. We had been here before when we first entered the country – our Malawi adventure had started at the Mushroom Farm, a traveller´s institution

Last time we had enjoyed it, the only downside being the composting toilets which were so badly designed and dirty that it was a challenge to use them.

This time we decided to stay for three days and take advantage of some of the activities on offer, as well as realising my ambition to eat our way through their entire menu.

But, as with many things, the reality did not live up to the memory. The toilets were just as bad as we remembered and the constant rain didn´t help as there was nowhere to cook or train or even sit undercover apart from hiking up and down 150 steep steps to the restaurant.

On our first day James serviced Henry whilst I worked on the blog. On the second day we went for a walk to a nearby waterfall with the French couple and their cyclist friend.

The views were lovely

And standing at the top of a high waterfall reminded us of doing the same in Guinea over two years ago

Our guide was willing to get rather closer to the edge than any of us were…

And we managed to get right down into the waterfall and stand behind it, getting a very refreshing spray of cool water on our faces

I bought myself a new bracelet from a local craftsman and we did a fascinating tour of a jewellers factory.

But overall we weren´t as excited by the campsite as we had been the last time. The food was proving a little disappointing, the toilets were just annoying and we were constantly soaking wet from the endless rain.

So the next morning we headed back down the pass to a new campsite on the lake shore.

This new campsite was about as different to the Mushroom Farm as it could get

Being on the shores of the Lake rather than up in the mountains, the first thing that hit us was the heat and humidity. The campsite itself had little shade but we at least had our awning.

The toilets were clean and properly designed which was such a relief. The restaurant area was nice and had a fantastic view

The place was run by a Belgian couple who prided themselves on great food. We ordered camembert toast for lunch and chicken tarragon with fruit wine for dinner and it was all delicious.

As we were settling in for the afternoon our French couple arrived…

And shortly afterwards the cyclist turned up.

We booked a boat trip to a nearby island with two of our new friends the next day. We had to take two boats in the end as trying to fit us all into one made things rather unstable. But once we were sorted the boat ride was very relaxing and the snorkeling at the island was simple and laid back.

But the main attraction of the day turned out to be a little female monkey called Mervin. Mervin was originally rescued by our hosts at the campsite and lived in the trees around there. But she turned out to be a true little monkey and kept stealing food and causing problems with guests so she was relocated to the island where there was already a small, wild monkey community.

She has settled in well and is thriving but retains her attachment to the staff of the campsite, including our guides. They had brought a little cake for her and she started off eating each piece quickly and greedily. But after a few mouthfuls she reached towards the guide´s hand and turned it over to see how much was left – when she found there was only one piece she gently took it, sat down, and started nibbling it carefully and slowly to make it last.

She is still a tinker though and when we went snorkeling we had to hide all our gear to stop her running off with it – including shoes, water bottles and t shirts.

Back on dry land, James and I sat with her whilst we waited for the other two to finish in the sea. James tried to coax her towards him but made a sudden movement and she ran away towards me, lifted my hand from my lap, curled up on my knee and put my hand back over her head to hide.

She had been grooming the guide, gently going through the hairs on his legs and picking out anything she found that didn´t belong – a sign of friendship and trust in the monkey world. After sitting in my lap for a few minutes she decided I needed grooming as well but couldn´t find so many hairs to look through. I was wearing my swimming costume and a t shirt and she worked her way up my legs trying to find some hairs. When she found none she went further and started trying to pull my bikini bottoms down!! I jumped up and decided the friendship had gone far enough!

But sadly what with the wobbly boats and the constant threat of rain we had all decided to not risk taking cameras or even mobile phones on the boat trip so I don´t have a single picture of Mervin….

We had been lucky with the weather, it had stayed dry for our boat trip but later than evening it poured down again and we spent a gloomy evening inside Henry watching a movie. The next morning it was still torrential and I ended up training in an undercover area I found on the next beach over.

We were due to leave that morning to head a little further north, slowly closing in on the Tanzanian border but reluctant to leave Malawi just yet. Before heading off we chatted to the owners of the campsite about their decision to leave Europe and set up home and business here. They said it was hard and frustrating at times but they had no regrets. She gestured with a sweep of her hand at the view over the lake, the large and beautiful thatched home they had built and smiled as she admitted they were some of the luckiest people around. We couldn´t disagree.

Out next destination was to be the Floja Foundation – a charity set up thirty years ago by two Dutch travellers, Flo and Jan, to support local children. The foundation runs a pre-prep school for kids aged between three and six.

It was quite difficult to find, we needed help from some of the local children who kept pointing us in the right direction, and when we arrived it all seemed a bit disorganised. The campsite itself was, to be polite, rustic but the ablutions were clean and nice

Flo and Jan left many years ago and the foundation is now run by volunteer managers, usually from the Netherlands as that is where the ten board trustees are still based. The current managers have only just taken over and are still finding their feet.

A few minutes after we arrived one of the managers came over to welcome us and tell us all about the place. We warmed to her straight away and were far more interested in the work of the foundation than how rustic the campsite was.

We settled in for the afternoon, reading and relaxing

The lake was so high that there was no beach – in fact the stormy waves lapping so close up to the campsite were almost defeaning and, at times, a little intimidating.

As I was finishing my training the next morning the other manager came over with our freshly baked bread and we sat and chatted for an hour or so about the state of both heath care and education in Malawi – both being very bad. At our previous campsite there had been an initiative whereby visitors could sponsor a child through their education and we had been tempted to take part. I discussed it with our new host as we had some reservations. His view was very well informed and he strongly recommended sponsoring a school rather than an individual, not just to enable more children to benefit but also to avoid any problems of encouraging dependency or expectation.

It was a lot to think about and as we pondered the ideas and opportunities we walked up to visit the school itself

The head teacher was delighted to see us and proudly gave us a grand tour of their facility.

There were two levels – two classes at Level 1 for three and four year olds and two further classes at Level 2 for five and six year olds

The kids were incredibly sweet!

We arrived just a play time and the teachers were singing with them and pushing them on swings. The Head Teacher gathered them together and started some educational songs – clearly enjoying his part (he said the actions kept him fit at the great age of 68!)

This second song was designed just for us….in case the Malawian accents are too strong, they are singing about two little blackbirds sitting on a hill, one named Jennifer and one named James!

Back in the classroom we were impressed with how advanced the kids were for such a young age. Even the youngest could spell, count and add up. They were learning their shapes and colours.

They had instructive videos, educational toys and alphabet and number boards. The teacher would choose a child to answer a question on how to spell something or cover a number on the board and ask the three year old child what number it was. They got most of the answers right.

Here the kids were taking it in turns to hold up a shape and say what it was before the rest of the class repeated it….this shape was a pentagon ´iiiit iiiiz a pent-a-gon´!!

They are taught in English and in their local language – the villagers rarely use English so the teachers have to keep repeating the words over and again to make them stick but what a fantastic start for these young children.

We could have stayed all day but it was getting very hot and we were starting to feel a little light headed. So, sweet as the children were, we eventually pulled ourselves away and went back to the campsite. The weather in the wet season is definitely schizophrenic – its either biblical rainstorms or unbearable heat. For the rest of the day, even with factor 50 sun tan cream on and sitting under our awning we sweated and burnt and drank litres of water. It didn´t rain again but we were treated to an impressive lightening display on the horizon over the Lake.

We were only just over an hour away from the Tanzanian border and our Malawi adventure was coming to an end. We had fallen in love with this country in a big way and enjoyed every minute of our time here – our promise to ourselves to make the most of our return visit after Christmas had been fulfilled in style and the country had exceeded all our expectations. I had estimated that we would spend two weeks here after our return from the UK – we had already been here six.

But if there are big-hitters amongst the beautiful and varied countries of the African continent, certainly from a tourism perspective, they don´t get much bigger than Tanzania – the heady heights of Kilimanjaro, the world-famous plains of the Serengeti and the pristine white beaches of Zanzibar. Malawi was firmly secured in our hearts but our feet had other plans. We were ready to take the plunge into our next great adventure and it promised to be one of the greatest so far.

We said our goodbyes to the Floja children, made a quick stop at the local market to stock up on fruit and veg and then turned our wheels north towards the border. We were sad to be leaving this remarkable country but were taking with us memories that would stay forever. We raised our eyes up towards the great plains where the incredible history of humankind first started and excitement pounded in our hearts….Tanzania…..