WEATHER: Hot 30C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting into a city, just for a few hours
BUMMER OF THE DAY:
BUYS OF THE DAY: New earphones for 25AUD
WORD OF THE DAY: TIA – This is Africa – used whenever we could
CAMP SITE RANKING: Free Wi-Fi, cold showers, flushing toilets and a groovy bar 4 out of 5 stars
Goodbye to Lake Malawi today. We are heading to the capital city of Lilongwe. We had only 270km to cover today and there wasn’t much traffic on the roads. Malawi certainly isn’t as busy as Tanzania in regards to trucks carrying goods and shipping containers. It is like a ghost town compared to that.
We arrived into Lilongwe at 1pm and went straight to camp to set up and have some lunch before getting dropped back into town to have some time to get some chores done. The city has surprised me; I guess we have been in the country for so long, that you just expect the city to be as primitive as what we have seen to date. But there were some western shops like Spar and Game and the people walking around looked well dressed and walking with a purpose around the city. I must admit it made a nice change.
We were given 2 hours to get our stuff done; otherwise you could walk the 20 minutes back to camp. So we ran around and went to the post office to try and get my Globetrotters stamp. The chick behind the counter (who looked like Marcia Hines) wouldn’t stamp my book, so I had to buy a lick lick stamp instead, but beggars can’t be choosers so I was happy with that at the end of the day. Next was the markets, we wanted to get something from Malawi and in the end Lisa and I got a woven plate for the bargain price of 10AUD – nice. Then we flitted off to the internet. I had to print a copy of my yellow fever certificate that I had emailed to me from home, apparently we need this to be able to exit Mozambique tomorrow afternoon. I then needed to get a new pair of earphones, my current ones are driving me nuts with a faulty connection, so we went straight to this shop called Game, and it was just like Big W or a Kmart back home. It had everything you could possibly need from electronics to home wares. So I found my earphones no worries, its Lisa’s birthday tomorrow, so I also got a supply of party hats (20 of them), some candles and also some balloons. It wasn’t the cheapest stuff to buy, I guess it is geared for the western people, but you only have a birthday once in Africa right! I love birthdays and look forward to sharing Lisa’s with her tomorrow. We also stocked up on some schnacks and I wasn’t too concerned about having enough money as I was just going to charge it to visa, so we got to the check-out and the checkout chick was just about finished ringing up my 12 items when I asked if they take credit card and they only take cash. Oh bugger. I had to leave Lisa with the stuff, run across the road to the ATM; pull out 10,000 kwacha’s and then run back to the shop. What type of massive store doesn’t accept credit cards! I guess there are some things we just take for granted. Then lastly we went to Spar, to check out if they had Skittles and the price of alcohol / champagne for Lisa’s birthday. It was all a little expensive, so Lisa bought some apple sour for everyone to have a shot tomorrow and we found an alternative to Skittles, called Jelly Tots, so we will give them a crack on the truck tomorrow to help kill some time.
So all that was done in 2 hours. Not a bad afternoon’s work.
After getting back to camp at 4.30pm we had free time, so we just sat outside the bar area with a warm beer and just chatted until dinner. A special mention has to go out to the choppers and Simon for dinner tonight. We had a steak, roast potatoes (which are so good as they are deep fried) and some spinach and garlic concoction which I didn’t have as I am not a fan of spinach, but was apparently super good. But to have an awesome piece of meat, that was cooked to perfection and had a scrumptious marinade on it was mouthwatering. All of Simon’s meals have been great, but this one was outstanding.
So a few more pre-birthday drinks with Lisa and then we were tucked up in bed by 10.45pm. It took us a while to settle down we were laughing so much about stuff, and the music from the bar was still blaring, and unfortunately for our sleep, they were all good songs, but we managed to drop off to be woken to my alarm that I had set for midnight, so that I could be the first one to sing happy birthday to Lisa, before we went back to sleep again till 4.15am.
We have a massive travel day tomorrow and an early start, but we figured we can sleep on the truck if we are tired so weren’t too concerned about the lack of sleep tonight.
Good-bye Malawi – we enjoyed our 4 days here!
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