Cape Maclear

This post is in retrospect from last weekend - i am now feeling up to writing! We decided to head for a place called Cape Maclear at the Southern end of the lake, without doing much research into how to get there other than asking a few malawians - 'its only 4 hours away'. 24 hours and at least three different buses/pickups later we arrived! In some circumstances, this could have been frustrating to say the least, but as we are still very excited to be in africa and it was our first time outside lilongwe - we had an awesome time. We met some really friendly people, saw malawis stunning countryside (and i might have slipped the fact that i think Malawi is a lot more beautiful than Ghana!) and got into some really funny situations.

the second last part of the journey, took a while to get going as we were the first to join the 'matola' - pickup, or lorry really. The matola leaves when it is full, and believe me, you would never guess how many people constitutes a full matola! We were lucky enough to get the front seats, (the back is the most uncomfortable journey you can imangine - ghanas public transport beats malawi hands down), but just as we were about to leave a lady turned up with a tiny baby, which was immediatly handed to me, i must have 'broody' written all over my forehead. It turned out she wanted to front seat - fair enough, i wouldnt be putting a tiny baby in the back o Louise kindly gave up her seat for them, and i had baby the whole journey - photos on facebook! Louise's journey was different, and full of experiences, for example, the laptop bag which kept being shoved in her face in the business kept making noises..and she couldnt work out how come, - it turned out there was a couple of chickens inside!!

anyway i could write about the journey for days... Lake Malawi was stunning and definetely worth the journey! It is very hard to believe it is a lake, as you cannot see the other side and there are waves. We were met there by Jon and the others, who were a bit more clever with their journey, and almost immediately put straight into double kayaks, which we used to paddle to a small island about 20 minutes away. It was great fun, and kind of paradise! At the island we snorkelled and observed some of Malawi's unique fresh water fish...most of which were a stunning bright blue colour. It has definetely given me the drive to go for a proper diving weekend. Apart from that, the weekend was spent lazying around, swimming, and eating gorgeus food! absolute luxury. One of the highlghts was the kids there, they were obviously very used to tourists and some of them just asked for money, bu most of them just wanted to know your name, and then called it whenever they saw you the whole weekend. Some of them had grouped together and come up with a very entreperenial(sorry spelling?) idea. They made a drum kit and other instruments out of rubbish they had found, including a very fancy base drum, and had composed some songs - including 'how are you? im fine' and 'we are the children' They played outside our guesthouse each night, hoping to get some donations. They were soo talented!

Anyway that has given us a good tasted for the lake and we will be back often, in fact next weekend for a huge festival - lakeofstars, but we might not venture as far in future unless we have extra days!

Love becky, xxx
ps - i sometimes wonder whether peple want to read this, but i personally find it useful as a way of keeping a diary, as i seem to find it hard to write one myself. Just read as u please. :)