We drove down to the main drag of Rumphi and stopped in a restaurant/bar that Dan had eaten at before.
Here's a view of the main drag through Rumphi from the front of the restaurant.
By this time, it was already 3:00 p.m. and we were pretty hungry. Thankfully we had eaten a little something in Nyika before taking off.
Both Katy and I needed to use the restroom, so we went to the adjacent bar/poolhall to find it. There was a toilet all right, but no running water. Nor was there a trash can. I'll leave it there out of respect for the faint of heart.
When we returned to our table, our traveling companions were gone. They had gone out back where the owner of the restaurant had kindly prepared a bucket of water for us to wash off the dirt that was caked on our hands and face. I went back to clean up, too, but by the time I got there, they had emptied the bucket. So I lathered on some hand sanitizer and returned to my seat.
The menu was one that we had grown accustomed to reviewing. Chicken, meat, or chambo (a type of fish found in Lake Malawi) with a side of either chips (i.e. french fries), nsima, or rice. We all ordered a permutation of these options.
About five minutes later, our server returned and told us that it would take awhile for the people who ordered chicken because the chicken was still thawing and wouldn't be ready for another 30-45 minutes. Also, the chips would take awhile, too, because the potatoes weren't ready.
Well, we were running late. If we were going to make it to Mzuzu (an hour away), buy a tire, drop off the borrowed tire to the Nyika office, and use the internet before everything closes (which tends to be around 5:00 p.m.) we better get a move on.
So we told our server that we were sorry but we needed to get going. We went across the street to the "PTC" (that's the People's market pictured above - there's one in every town) to buy a few snacks, and we headed down the road to Mzuzu.
Rumphi had no gas for us on the way up, and no lunch for us on the way down.
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