Tail Between Our Legs

It's been such a long time since I've put together a post, I've forgotten where we left off, maybe someone will refresh my memory ...

Oh yes, that's right, we're still in Rumphi, we're still hours from Lilongwe, it's now Saturday and we need to get back for our Sunday flights. We're fine, we have the entire day ... what was that? Shoot, I forgot we don't have a vehicle.

So here we are, still in Rumphi, merely a couple hundred miles away from Lilongwe, we got up super early to start our day, we'll be fine. First leg, Rumphi to Mzuzu.

If anyone has been in a developing country, you've probably seen them, the small mini-vans that whiz around towns, packed to the gills (I had to look up the origin of this expression, amazingly, not in Wikipedia), yes, I know you've seen them before, I have too. We've all seen them but how many of us have actually been in one? Wow, I'm impressed. I've never been in one myself, not until this day.

Let me back up. The night before, we were discussing our options with how to return to Lilongwe. Since another rental was not an option, it was down to public transportation, either bus or even possibly renting out and entire mini-bus for our trip. What we decided to start was we had to at least get to Mzuzu, a slightly large city that has a bus depot and then figure out our options from there.

So here we are, with our bags bulging out the back, we pile into the bus, the 5 of us and 15 others for a total of 20. We were like clowns in a VW Bug. And I thought our prior sleeping arrangement were close quarters, at least it was only for an hour. Here's a look inside:


That was taken from the last row, me and Dan are sitting in the opposite facing seats, like the seats in the first couple rows of a Southwest flight, except much tighter.

We arrive in Mzuzu and are delighted to find that a bus to Lilongwe was still at the depot. The night before, we thought the bus would depart too early but we discover that much like traffic signals, bus schedules are suggestive too. The buses depart only when full and fortunately, it wasn't full but close enough that we didn't have to wait too long. About an hour later, we're on our way. Here we are in our seats, in the very rear of the bus:





Did I mention the engine was beneath our seats? It was rather warm but we did very well, just happy to be heading in the right direction. We met some people on the bus, played some cards and made fun of Ryan.

RS: Playing cards without a table:



7 hours later, we finally made it back to Lilongwe sans Hilux.

We did have to say good-bye to Moya. I don't know where we would've been if it wasn't for Moya.

Thank you Moya!

Moya and Daniel

No One Home at Mr. Mhongo's

So off we go from Chelinda camp. It's an hour later than we hoped, but at least we have a double patched tire that, although the mechanics warned us not to drive out on, should serve as a fairly reliable spare.

I, for one, was bummed to leave. The park was beautiful, the weather was perfect, and Chalet 4 was cozy. I was also excited about Nkhata Bay, however; I had read a bit about it and the Cheeze and Squeezy had talked it up.

JP: From one of our earlier posts, you may remember us describing the road conditions up to Nyika Plateau, namely that they are terrible. So terrible that we could go no faster than 20km/hr, tops. So terrible that Dan would send us out to remove large impediments, oh, you think I'm kidding ...
he'd then take off down the road, make us run to catch up and have a laugh.


RS: Unfortunately, we had to take the same road down that we took up. Fortunately, it's still fun to laugh at Jon.

JP: So after a couple days of these roads, rocking back and forth, side to side and me hitting my head numerous times on the side of the car [RS: Jon is the only one who seemed to have this problem, and he experienced this problem again, and again, and again, and . . . did you ever see that movie Memento?], we were really looking forward to making it back to the tarmac road, especially since we were down a spare. [RS: Or at least a spare we could trust - did we mention this we're driving with the wrong sized tire on the front driver's side?] We were determined to make it to Nkhata Bay for swimming in Lake Malawi and this dinner buffet the Squeeze kept telling us about, but before Nkhata Bay, we still had to do a few things:

1. Drop by Mr. Mhongo's to give the run-down on the borrowed tire drop-off
2. Buy a new tire in Mzuzu
3. Return the borrowed tire to the Nyika office there
4. Buy more diesel
5. Use the internet

Seemed pretty manageable.

RS: We made it to the gate of Nyika without incident. Squeezy, behind the wheel, got us through like a Baja 500 driver on methamphetamines.

(Come to think of it, a helmet would have been good for Jon.)

We went down to Mr. Mhongo's place to tell him about the borrowed tire. We talked to his wife who told us Mr. Mhongo was in the area but she didn't know when he'd be back. Well, we were facing a bit of a time crunch. The Squeeze had already written Mr. Mhongo a note that Prince Daniel was to pass along, so we figured we made a good faith effort and we'd just keep moving to Mzuzu.

We got back on the road, exited Nyika, put some music on the radio, and kept driving.

http://www.sdsefi.com/truck1.jpg

Lunch in Mzuzu

Mzuzu is the central hub of transportation in Northern Malawi. We decided to stop there because we knew we could get some decent chow and stock up on groceries for the self-catering chalet we reserved for our stay in Nyika National Park.

Dan (that's Squeezy to you) had been to Mzuzu before and recommended a restaurant called Graceland for lunch. As luck would have it, Graceland was located next to a pharmacy where I was able to pick up bilharzia medication for swimming in Lake Malawi. (You can read about bilharzia (aka Schistosomiasis) here.)

(JP: Outside the pharmacy we met another rastafarian, like our friends Lemon Squeezy and Cheese on Toast, who was selling bracelets. His name was Sweet Banana.)

Lunch was basic but satisfying. Afterwards, we split up to take care of a few important errands.

Dan took the car to the gas station while Katy, Mellissa (i.e., Cheese on Toast), Jon, and I went to the market to pick up food and other supplies (by "other supplies," I mostly mean toilet paper - see Malawi gurgle). We were all focused at this point because time was running tight after our blowout and a lunch that ran longer than we were hoping. We quickly cobbled together ingredients for a few solid meals and picked up a crate of beer.

Dan met us outside with the car. He had checked the air pressure in the tires but didn't get gas at the gas station. He figured, reasonably so, that since the thing to do in Nyika is drive around the dirt roads looking for wildlife and taking in the scenery, we should top off at the last town before the park, Rumphi, so that we would have as much diesel as possible for touring Nyika. So we loaded the groceries into the car and headed off towards Rumphi ...

[Insert impending doom music here]