Lilongwe, Malawi

We managed to organize a private taxi to take us from the backpackers out of town to get some groceries, change money, and do some last minute email checks. Linda and Patrick joined us as well so it made it more worthwhile than waiting for minibuses to fill up. When we were done we headed for the Mchinji border town. We got a free visa at the border for Malawi and our guide book warned us about changing money with the touts at the border so we were able to brush them off. We had to take a 12km taxi ride from the Malawian immigration offices to the first town on the Malawian side where we had to then get a minibus for the two hour drive to the capital city of Lilongwe. The minibus was a bit of a wreck as the sliding door kept falling off the runners and the driver had to get out and fix it up after each passenger had got off.



It was noticeable how fertile the farms were in Malawi and a great contrast to the deserts of Zambia and Namibia.



We managed to work out where the backpackers was located that we wanted to stay at and so avoided stopping at the bus station and the flood of taxi touts. Unfortunately the backpackers/camp was nothing like it was described in our guide book. Nevertheless, John and I checked into the 8 bed dorm room while Linda and Patrick pitched their tent.



The place had new owners and it stunk of dog smells on the outdoor padded seating areas. One dog was asleep in the entrance to the dorm room and another in the middle of the outdoor seating area. The place had been without water for 48 hours and we had to bucket water from the pool to wash. There were meals prepared in the camp but we decided to walk into town to eat as we were not sure that things would be very clean without any water to prepare food in the restaurant.



The town was pretty crowded and there was a huge market area near the river in the town centre where sellers were peddling shoes, clothes and food.

The next day we all decided to move from the camp. Linda and Patrick went to the golf club as they had a camp ground there and we went to the St Peter's Church guesthouse. The guesthouse was clean and each bed had a mosquito net and quite a large room. At least it had running water!

We had seen an advertisement for a local internet connection for our mobile stick so we headed off to get it and catch up on emails and the blog. Once we found the headquarters for the company we discovered that they had no SIm cards left any where in the city. We were sent to several places to find one but couldn't and as we were about to return to our guesthouse the company manager found us and had at last tracked one down that we could buy. He was so embarrassed that he didn't have any when we visited him.

By the time we had returned to our guesthouse a wedding party was raging in the garden with loud thumping music. This happened at the same time that two other wedding parties raged across the road at the golf club where Patrick and Linda were staying too. What a racket! As soon as the sunset the three wedding parties shut down so that was a relief. We joined Patrick and Linda at the golf club and ate in the clean and cheap restaurant there.

There was not much to keep us longer in Lilongwe so we planned our route out of there towards the coast.