Sunday January 9th.
The thunderstorm arrived during the night and it rained all night. Made for a fitful sleep. It was still raining in the morning when we packed up. Tent was wet and sandy and so were we.
The drive today was quite pretty as we drove up and over a mountain pass as we travelled north along the shore of Lake Malawi. Lots of little villages and little farms. Malawi is known for growing tea and tobacco. The farms are all farmed by hand with adze spades. Every time our truck goes by all the people stop to look at us, child cheer or yell and adults either wave or just stare. Wonder what they are thinking...
We have been warned repeatedly not to take photos at border crossings or police check points or of any government buildings. We had been told they would make us erase the photo or confiscate the camera. Today, we stopped and out of the right side of the truck I saw a great photo of three women standing by the road under umbrellas. I stuck the camera out and took it. Well you guess it, Vernon came onto the back of the truck and asked who had taken a photo and the police wanted to see it. So I got off the truck and explained to the two policemen what I had taken a picture of and why. They wanted to see it and when they did, they realized I hadn't taken a picture of the them, so they were okay. But it was a close call, lesson learned. Thank goodness they spoke English!
We stopped at a town called Mzuzu for water and a few groceries. The power was out here too and the grocery store was lit by candles!
We finally arrived at our camp at Chitimba Beach. The camp site is okay but the other beach was nicer and the facilities are the worst we've had yet in Africa. Power was out here too. We camped beside a sausage tree, that has really large fruit that elephants and monkeys eat, but not humans. You wouldn't want one falling off a tree and hitting you as they are about the size of large eggplant and very hard. The owner, Ed Peeters, of the camp (from the Netherlands) has two pet African Wood Owls that he has raised after their home tree was cut down. They hang out around the lounge area. He is also an excellent photographer and showed John and I a bunch of his shots.
We hung around the camp setting up and having lunch. Then later John, Richard, Filip and I went for a walk down the beach. Really interesting as we got to see lots of native people going about their day. Boys swimming, women doing laundry, men mending the fishing nets, fishermen paddling their mokoros and being followed by young men/students who are always trying to sell us stuff. They pretend they want to practise their English, and ask us our names and countries, and eventually their bring out their stuff. A bit tiring but we've learned to tell them we are not buying anything as soon as we meet them. That usually slows them down.
Then back to the camp for a shower and a relax by the bar with John while updating my journal for the blog.
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