New Arrival

This morning, Chris Farrance, the new consultant to join us here in Blantyre was due to arrive by coach from Lilongwe.  It was due to arrive at around 11.30 this morning, so before that Peter and I set off on a further orientation journey around Blantyre, so I could see where the key areas and places in the city are located.

The coach trip from Lilongwe should take around 4 hours (police road blocks  permitting).  Unfortunately, at around 11.15, we got a call from Chris to say that his coach had broken down just 3.5kms outside Blantyre, so we decided to go and pick him up.  We stopped for petrol, which was just as well because we then got another call to say that he was in fact about 30 minutes outside Blantyre (clearly had got some duff information from the coach driver).

So off we went (I was driving) to find the coach.  Along the way I saw a second "instant demise of goat" incident, this time meted out by the minibus in front of us on the road - I reckon the goats of Malawi are going to start watching out for me and running away.  Eventually we found the coach parked up with all the passengers standing around on the side of the road.  I turned Daisy around and pulled up behind the coach.  Chris was distributing sweets to the kids from the nearby village.  We extricated him and his luggage, and set off back towards Blantyre.

We got back into Blantyre, and decided to go to a vegetarian Indian restaurant (Veggie Delight) for a spot of lunch.  I had a masala Dhosa [see left] which was very acceptable indeed, and only a couple of quid.

We then took Chris on a quick tour of Blantyre including where the office is located, the supermarket, and the sports club.

We also popped into Club Mustang Sally for a beer.  I introduced myself to the owner, Rob - I mentioned him in Friday's blog.  It seems Rob used to own a couple of clubs in the Manchester area and came out to Malawi some time ago.  His story is that where the bar is used to be his house, and his mates used to come round and drink his beer, so he figured he might as well set up a bar and charge them for it!  I took a couple of pictures to give a feel for the place, including the entrance (above), and the upstairs bar & pool (below).

I've not actually seen anyone in the pool yet, but I'm told it does happen, although it may require several drinks to make it seem a sensible thing to do.  Rob was keen for us to stay for his regular weekend barbecue (I quote "big steaks at cost price") but as we'd already eaten, we politely declined, but I will try and do one at some point.  You can see the pool in the picture here.  The disco is to the left of this shot, and the upper bar is in the background.

After a quick beer, it was back to the house so that Chris could settle in.  This evening, we're planning to go to TJ's bar to watch the Brazil vs Ivory Coast game.

That's all for now.

Roadtrip to Lengwe National Park

Today Peter and I decided to head off south west to find a bit of warmth and sunshine. We headed off through the mountains towards Chikwawa, and the Lengwe National Park. The scenery along the route was fabulous - the road has innumerable hairpin bends with dramatic views down across the Majete wildlife reserve into Mozambique. And then the Shire (pronounced Shiree) River comes into view, flowing south towards where it meets the Zambezi.

We passed through several villages, with small markets, and road-side stalls selling bananas, sugar cane, and charcoal, and the occasional larger town or village such as Chikwawa, with a bigger market.

After a while we crossed over the river and continued along the road, reaching a large sugar cane plantation. The road was dead straight for over 4kms and all you could see on either side was sugar cane - a hugely impressive sight.

Beyond the sugar cane we arrived at Lengwe National Park. The entrance gate was set between on one side a ticket office and a small shop containing several thick textile products such as carpets, blankets and bags, plus a few books; and on the other side a small museum and a set of buildings including a library building. We were told they had plans to extend the educational services on the site. We were charged a very small fee for access to the museum, and a small fee for access to the Park. We drove in and reached Nyala Lodge where we paused briefly before setting off to drive a loop of the eastern end of the park.

Lengwe offers only a limited range of wildlife to view, but it is all naturally there rather than having been introduced by man. The roads were OK (we'd checked at the gate that Daisy would be able to cope) - just dirt tracks, some of which had been levelled, it appeared, by snow ploughs judging by the lines of earth lying on each side of the track. Some of the trees and bushes hung over the track, and poor Daisy had branches scratching along each side, and tree roots scraping along her underparts, but she kept going like a good'un.

Along the way, we came across yellow baboons, impala, nyala, warthogs, and two giant birds that I haven't yet managed to identify - but they were huge heron-like things.

Pics are on Flickr in a slideshow (hit Show info for details).

Now, on the main Malawi roads, you quite regularly come across permanent police checkpoints - these are gates across the road, manned by several police persons, that often stop you and then may question you about where you've come from, where you are headed for, what are you doing in Malawi, etc. We got stopped on the way to Lengwe, and on the way back we were stopped again by the same policeman, who remembered us from earlier in the day. This time, the question was a bit different. Would we be willing to transport a police detective along the road to the next checkpoint? Of course, we would. Gerry, the detective, was a very nice guy. We were asking him about what sort of crime he had to deal with in the area, and he seemed to rejoice in telling us that he had to deal with murders. When asked why there were murders, he replied that it was due to the weather! We dropped him of at the following checkpoint and headed on back over the Thyolo Escarpment and into Blantyre.

A good day.