The road from Katete to Mfue was dotted with villages. Lots of thatched roofs and rendered walls arranged around corrals and huge mango trees. Each house provided different snippets of Zambian life; carrying water from wells, tending gardens, cooking nshima on fires by the door, walking dusty tracks, babies wrapped in bright chitenges, collecting wood and watching animals. Occasionally little grass shops stood out the front of houses, selling tomatoes, cabbage, ground nuts or whatever else was available in limited excess. Kids ran from all directions to wave and shout 'Mzungu!!' and occasionally their families joined in too. Although not the fastest route, it was most definitely the nicest one.
Mfue town itself is a long road of tiny shops and market stalls stretching almost from the airport to the gates of South Luangwa National Park. We arrived the same day that the president was to make an appearance. He must have sent campaign coordinators ahead well in advance. The town was festooned in party colours and the presidential face grinned at us from every possible surface. If giving out shirts and chitenges counts for anything, he'd surely won last weeks' election by a mile. Every man and woman in sight sported his face beaming from brand new garments in green. How police got word that Mr President was finally coming we don't know, but in perfect synchronization every vehicle was waved off the road just seconds before a convoy of sirens and flashing lights sped by. A fleeting glimpse of the boss man. Behind came a Troopy - lazily hurling a few extra shirts out the window on the off chance someone still didn't have one.
After the excitement of a presidential drive-by, South Luangwa served up a huge array of other delights we'd not yet seen. Female lions with a kill, male lions with ginger manes, wattled cranes, new breeds of wildebeest and giraffe, yellow baboons, up close encounters with Ground Hornbills and our first chance to learn what a hippo looks like when he's angry. As far as parks go, it's definitely an impressive one! We missed out on seeing the wild dogs and the leopards, but time was taken up by a few navagatorial fuax pas'.
While trails indicated that others had made it successfully, we failed to notice the hay and didn't pay heed to the 'Sand Driving 101' handbook. Hitting the deep stuff at a super slow pace, we almost stopped where we started. Within seconds of coming to a halt a handful of guys were running down the opposite bank armed with hessian sacks, shovels, more hay and the obligatory rifle. They were in a boat and headed our way before Landy was even in reverse. Girl (feeling guilty at having directed us in there) just managed a snap before Landy was free. The guys laughed when we asked if it happens often. Not too far on, a lunch break stop turned into a bit of an ordeal when Guy discovered a stick jammed into one of the tyres. Shit!
We plugged it, pumped it and limped back home.
At the campsite people from everywhere learned one of the lessons that everyone must learn in Africa. When it comes to monkeys, NOTHING is sacred. Because we'd already learned that particular lesson twice, the manager's suggestion that fruits and vegetables be carted all the way to the restaurant kitchen for safekeeping meant we readily moved our stockpile that way. Those who thought solid, locked black boxes would do the trick returned to find that huge baboon canines had made light work of opening and then ransacking the lot. Others who left car windows and doors open found monkeys inside, then up trees with arms full of everything that wasn't tied down. One little guy gleefully galloped away with a cup in one hand while his buddy chewed a fork. Oops!
That night a hippo grazed right under us and the next morning a huge bull elephant and two baby giraffe provided a breakfast spectacle. The perfect way to farewell Zambia.
Having watched others learn lessons the previous day, our own turn to learn came at the border next morning. Everything you'll ever read says to avoid street touts at all costs. But at the border there's a pickle. No banks outside Malawi exchange currency into Malawian Kwatcha and there are no ATM's dispensing it until you're IN Malawi. Visas, import permits and road tax can be paid in US dollars at the border post, but the insurance can only be paid in Kwatcha. Which we didn't have. Which meant all of the men wandering around with wads of the stuff suddenly made sense. We took stock, googled the exchange rate and found a guy who'd give us the goods at a decent price. He counted it out, we were happy and when we left we realized had half of what we thought. Shit!! A lesson we won't need to learn twice.
In Lilongwe we were bowled over by people's kindness. When we asked where to buy a SIM card a lady produced one gratis from her drawer, when the campsite had no hot water the receptionist gave us a room and when we asked a groundsmen if he knew a mechanic he jumped in the car and came with us, to interpret and make sure we got a good price. Each of these random acts of kindness came with interesting asides.
The SIM card was the wrong size, but a cook in the nearby restaurant volunteered to fix it. Wielding a giant kitchen knife he attempted to remove SIM A from inside the phone...a job which can only be done with a pin, paperclip or earring. Guy rescued the phone and demonstrated SIM extraction by paperclip before the knife caused serious harm. Said knife DID cut SIM B down to size though. The finishing touches were then done by scraping it along a stone wall until it fit perfectly. Who knew!?
The adventure to the mechanic didn't end quite so well. We showed up to a roadside workshop with a jack that no longer lifted and a tyre with a plug that needed repairing. The agenda was to fix the jack, repair the tyre and go. This ended with a busted wheel spanner, a threaded wheel nut that wouldn't come off and a jack that still wouldn't jack. Shit! The men were all very nice and very helpful, making it impossible to be angry about the fact that they were also a little bit inept. We left the jack for a guy to play with overnight and went to an official tyre place the next morning. The jack still didn't jack, so we had to venture back into the city to get a new one. And a wheel spanner.
Lake Malawi was well worth celebrating after all that. A job we took seriously by settling into the white sand with a few longnecks of the local brew. A fisherman paddled a canoe our way and sold us his catch so fresh it was still flapping. The tropical dream came true. A week later we'd met old friends, made new ones and had our fix of swimming, paddle boarding and sun baking lakeside. We bundled some groovy poms into the car then bounced, scraped and threaded our way around 27 hairpin bends to a spot called Livingstonia. A town started long ago as a mission, the god squad knew how to pick their real estate. Views from the escarpment stretched forever and we felt on top of the world. Anyone who's seen 'The land before time' might get a sense of what it looked like.
Apart from the serenity and the views, Livingstonia also provided some nice opportunities for hiking. Four of us teamed up with Thomas, a local guide who led us up to the plateau and then past villages and waterfalls. Although he knew his way around, Thomas didn't prove very personable. The sum of his guiding dialogue amounted to numerous calls of "Are you ok?" and asking us to send him stuff. In the middle of the day we made a near-vertical ascent. Several hundred metres at a 70° incline with no letting up. Sweat streaming off us, sun beating down and breath heavy, Thomas varied the vocabulary to include "Are you comfortable?". It would have been a good time to kick him in the shins were we not so knackered.
Later, we were ambling downhill through forest when a pair of baboons raced across the path ahead, creating quite the stir. We hadn't seen it but the wiley creatures had stolen a chicken, which the chicken owners clearly wanted back. There were moments of mayhem as people of all ages went racing down tracks whistling, shouting and throwing things. As far as we could tell the chicken and the baboons were long gone. Over the edge and into the abyss. But then the people went over too! Disappearing into the trees at our feet, Thomas included. To get some perspective, we were just metres from an enormous waterfall. The cliff was sheer. The fact that any person would go over there in a hurry is a testament to their dedication. They clung to trees and leaped over the edge in hot pursuit. We could do little more than wait. Everyone did make it back up the cliff face, but the baboons got to enjoy their chicken feast.
We returned to the lake a few days later, soaking up a few more rays before country number seven.
Bye bye mama Malawi.
Up next: Tanzania