Malawi

Malawi

The road -blocks in Africa are a way of life, whether police or army. I often wonder the reason behind them, particularly in comparatively peaceful countries like Malawi. I keep saying I'll ask one of the officers but somehow the time never seems to be 'quite right'. Our last stop was a classic - keep your gob shut and intersperse dialogue with "Sir" a lot - the soldier in question having an Uzi under his arm, an AK47 slung across his back and a 'wild-west' style, unsheathed Bowie knife tucked into his belt. Quite why, in Malawi, allegedly the most peaceful country in Africa, he needed an arsenal of this proportion I don't know, but, with discretion being the better part of valour I put off asking. Fortunately this was the only display of military might we witnessed in this country.

We headed into Blantyre where we holed up at 'Doogles' backpackers for a few days before heading up to Monkey Bay with 'Hovis' Dave (who we'd first met in Zimbabwe where we'd given him his nickname playing golf!) and Anthony, a local who had kindly offered to show us around. The 'cottage' that Anthony took us to turned out to be a small country club by UK standards. Situated with its own beach on the banks of Lake Malawi and, although not requested, complete with white tunic-attired chef. Whilst here we spent an evening at 'African Vibe' bar. Having downed a round of shooters, Lloyd, the bar owner, offered a free drink to whoever could orally 'fire' the shooter glass through the mouth of a one metre high African mask situated above the optics. Lucy, Anthony and I all failed miserably but 'Hovis' Dave produced another 'smashing' slice that ricocheted into the glass shelf.

Floods and Bridges

Next morning we discovered that the rain had destroyed the short connecting road we needed to take to get to our next destination, Senga Bay, so we had to take a fairly major detour. A sign at the main junction indicated that a bridge was down 100k's after Chipoka (which would be 80k after Senga Bay). An hour down the road we slowed down to ride through a barricade of cars and minibuses. We pulled up in front of the pile of mangled iron that once would have taken us over the river, but the bridge had been swept away by floods the night before! The road sign should have read that the bridge was down at Chipoka, we were only 20k's short of our destination……..how pissed off ?

A crowd appeared around us, a much bigger crowd than we usually attract, and assembling much quicker than we'd grown accustomed to. One of the on-lookers beckoned to me to follow him, and having hauled the bike onto centre stand I squeezed through the already four deep crowd. We haven't been victims as yet, and not wanting to start here, I turned to Lucy and reminded her to keep eyes in the back of her head. I followed our self-elected guide down the steep 20 metre high bank to the river. It wasn't particularly fast flowing and only thigh deep - as demonstrated by the procession of men and women wading across it with their belongings balanced on head. My concern, however, was the wet, metre high bank on the other side. Even with knobbly tyres - which we don't have - getting out again would be a major task.

Luggage, including panniers, would also have to come off. There was no shortage of willing volunteers to help us out and I have to admit the idea of riding through this did appeal. But keeping track of bags and panniers as well as the tank-bag, whilst dragging our bike up the bank of this African river would prove difficult to say the least. Now, I hate sensible, my entire 35 years I've always hated sensible, riding motorbikes around the world isn't sensible, but after consultation with Lucy it was decided that a 200k change of direction was infinitely preferable to trashing the bike or losing our luggage at this early stage of the trip.

Not that the route to our new destination, Lilongwe, was without its moments; 60k's back down the road we turned off to Dedza - a road marked on the Michelin map as 'improved/partially improved'. It looked approximately 20k's on paper and would cut out 100k's of boring tar. We decided to give it a whirl, if it turned bad we could always come back. After 10k's we went onto compact earth and gravel. The journey took us up and down a mountain and around the tight twisty roads that clung to it. Fortunately the rain held off, and we hit the main road just South of Lilongwe, after 50k's off-road and with dusk approaching.

We stopped on the outskirts of the city for fuel and got directions from a local driver. It was dark now, and what with the rain and distinct lack of street lamps, visibility was on the rocks. We were turning into the required road, through a puddle when 'CRASH', the bike dropped so that the seat was at knee level. Passing cars sounded their horns and the oncoming traffic swerved to avoid us. "Off, quick" I shouted to Lucy, concerned about the approaching traffic and dreading what could've broken to cause such a dramatic collapse. I looked down at the back of the bike, and realised that it was actually holding itself upright. The rear wheel, rather than being in a puddle was more than hub deep in a crater the size of a small swimming pool. A big handful of throttle spun the wheel, the tyre scrambled to lift its 400kilo-payload back onto the flat but failed. Lucy threw her weight behind us and with a lot more spinning and a big cloud of rubber smoke the Beemer hauled itself back onto the road - wearing, I estimate, a couple of thousands kilometres of tread away in the process and soaking Lucy from head to foot in dirty rainwater. Fortunately, as later inspection revealed, the damage to the bike was little more than cosmetic.

The Big Blue

After a night in Lilongwe, we rode north to Nkhata Bay and 'Big Blue' campsite. Situated on the shore of Lake Malawi with thatched bamboo huts looking out onto the water, a more idyllic location would be hard to find. One evening Glen, the barman at a nearby backpackers, took me, Lucy and Dave into town to sample some of the local nightlife. As I gyrated on the dance floor of the local disco, Glen laughed and said to Lucy "Now I know why they say white men can't dance!" Amongst the characters we met that night was 'Diamond Geezer' who danced like a maniac and decided to recite to us his extensive repertoire of cockney rhyming slang. He even taught me a couple of new ones!

A few days R&R and we decided to head off for Tanzania. However, 'Big Blue' was to turn out much like 'Hotel California' - you can check out but you can never leave…

Turning the bike around in the sandy car park, I managed, rather embarrassingly, to drop it. While lifting it back up again I took too much weight on my legs and heard the rip as the top of the left calf muscle gave way under the strain! The local doctor prescribed pain killers and advised me to eat lots of protein, rest and drink whiskey - not something I was going to find a hardship! So we resigned ourselves to a few more days at 'Big Blue'.

Heading for Tanzania

Due to my leg still being bad, we agreed it would be best if I rode the bike to Dar-es-Saleem and Lucy took public transport. This turned out to be a good move as 10km of the route was a knee-deep mud-bath and another 50km was shale - even though the road was marked on the map as being tarmac!. With the previous 13,000km having diminished our Metzelers tread depth to barely visible, this 'off-road' section of the route was made interesting to say the least! Dusk caught up with me while I was still in Malawi so I holed up 50km south of the border.

5.45am the following morning I hit the road and despite some typically 'do it when I'm ready' style officialdom at the border, I made good time into Tanzania. In stark contrast to yesterday's quagmire, the roads were good - I mean really good. For 200km I was able to lob the bike around as if on a racetrack, taking full advantage of being solo!

Despite my best efforts to make journeys end in daylight, on this occasion I failed. Dar-es-Saleem at night was a frenzy of vehicular lunacy with battered mini buses jostling for pole-position on the three-lane highway (or was it two and the pavement?). Still, 800km in 13 hours wasn't bad.

Photographs

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