2011!

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you all had wonderful Christmasses and are having a good 2011 so far. I, personally had a wonderful holiday - thanks for asking.

Our travels started on the 9th of December as we were offered a lift to Blantyre a day earlier than expected. Our visas were almost sorted and are still not quite inished but they're oficial now and we just need the stamp in our passports. Staying in the beautiful place known as Doogles (it's not actually very pretty but there's a bar and good food and often a surprising amount of people willing to uy a few drinks) we ended up there for four nights in total before heading up to Zomba.

Now, for some brief history, Zomba used to be the capital city of Malawi but has now been replaced by Lilongwe. It's a stunning place with big green mountains and monkeys everywhere (much to Nancy's delight). We stayed at 'The Trout Farm' which is...a trout farm. However, they are not selling the trout because they don't have enough and I reckon they make most of their money from the little chalets and people like me. There's no electricity so they equip you with lots o candles and there's a wood-burning stove which they light for you in the evenings. It's actually rather cold up in the mountains in Zomba. Now, I realise I have probably written about weather and temperature an awful lot but I'm British and as many of you are too then you should be appreciating my meteorological conversation. Seriously it was cold! I wanted a jumper but hadn't thought to pack one for our holiday. We slept with blankets and warmed up by a fire. I enjoyed being cosy again and it was definitely good to be cooler when we went hiking. Yup, a 6 hour hike - Gold DofE thank youuu. The views from the top were just incredible, I don't think I'll ever forget looking over the planes of Malawi from what feels like the top o the world only a few metres from a pretty sheer drop down.

After a few days in Zomba being healthy and catching up on sleep we hopped on a bus (which took about an hour to get going) which took us to Senga Bay. When I say it took us there, I mean it took us somewhere and then pointed us to a minibus which, in turn, stopped randomly again and pointed us to a pick-up which actually took us to Senga Bay. I'm sure I raved about Lake Malawi after Lake of Stars but I have to reinforce how beautiful it is. I'll try to upload some photos at some point. Senga Bay is pretty quiet and we chilled out on the beach, ate nice food and wandered up to the Crocodile farm and 'Stuart's Tropical Fish Farm' which was a hilarious anti-climax that I wouldn't change for the world. That day we walked around for about 5 hours in total and got a little burnt (Nancy more than me. Ha! Sorry Nancy...but I am usually 'the burnt one'). Our last night at Senga bay we were taken by some Slovenian travellers to the local bar which was hilarious. Malawians have now made me fully appreciate the cliche of 'Dance like nobody's watching'. They will just wander onto the dance floor and have the time of their lives all alone. It makes me smile. we had a bit of a late one and a few drinks before heading back and getting up early the next day to head on to Nkhotakhota.

This time we managed to stay on the same minibus the whole way although at one point it broke down and we all had to get off. Getting our bags off was a bit of hassle but was nothing compared to 'Giraffe man' who was trying to transport about 7 wooden giraffes which were about a metre tall. He unloaded all of them, then waited for about 10 minutes before the bus fixed itself and we all hopped back on with our bags. It wasn't so easy for Giraffe man, he now had to reload all his giraffes but the boot door was jammed and so he had to attempt to load them through the window before the driver started going again. Poor, poor giraffe man.

We arrived in Nkhotakhota and were only planning on staying one night so we checked in somewhere we thought was cheap (don't always trust the Bradt guide!). It sure looked cheap but all we wanted was a bed so we dumped our bags before going out to explore and take a look at the pottery which is beautiful and has a rather nice gift shop... On our return we asked about the price of our room and found that it was about the same as a much nicer place. We then discovered the water wasn't working. We then asked for food which was extortionately expensive but it was now dark and there was nothing at all nearby. So, we spent our evening exhausted and wanting a shower eating overpriced food which took 2 and a half hours to come. During this frustrating 2 and a half hours we were watching Sky News. Now, this was exciting for the first half hour of reports on the Uk's snow and something about cricket but it turns out that Sky News pretty much repeats itself every half hour. So, about 5 identical news reports later, we fell into bed and set the alarm for 'early'. We got out pretty speedily in the morning and could have left without paying as the guy on the door said goodbye but, alas, our morals are just too strong.
Needless to say, we couldn't wait to get to Kande Beach.

The Kande Beach journey was pretty smooth from what I can recall -checks journal- yup, nothing of interest to report there. Kande is essentially a village and someone has built a tourist resort on the beach. I wouldn't really want to spend more than a week there because you're rather limited to where you can go but the beach is absolutely beautiful, unspoilt. I spent a fair few hours getting some tan on my shins. They are now golden brown! We didn't do anything too exciting but rented a pedallo one day to go to the little island. We met some pretty cool people, I have never really experienced 'overland trucks' before (probably because I live on an island) but I now know what they are. I'm not sure if I'd want to do so much driving around Africa but it sounded like they've seen some pretty incredible things. Don't even ask about the money!

We left Kande slightly reluctantly for Nkhata bay. We weren't reluctant for long. Nkhata bay is seemingly the party capital of the lakeshore and we had the most incredible time. We were there from the 22nd to the 28th so had a good 5 nights in which to explore and party hard for Nancy's birthday (24th) and Christmas (and boxing day and the 27th...). There were a couple of times we were out to see the sunrise over the lake and it was genuinely my highlight of our holidays. The lodge we were in was wonderful depite a lot of steep stone stairs which are unavoidable regardless of whether you want to go to your room, the bathroom or the bar. Really I reckon they're a health and safety risk but Malawi don't have quite the same rules about that kind of thing. Right on the lakeshore our little 2-person cabin was very sweet and we had lots of morning swims and generally relaxed during the day.

Christmas was incredibly surreal away from home and didn't particularly feel like Christmas. It was very warm but not too hot. I had only had 3 hours sleep after getting back at 5.30am from the last night so we pretty much just chilled out. I had a phonecall from home which was surreal. Having not heard my family's voices in 3 months it was a tiny bit emotional but I wasn't particularly sad, just...emotional. I dunno, but it was lovely to hear about everyone at home and the snow and to hear my mum ask me how she can end the call (on skype) once we had finished:-
Mum: ' I might have to get Henry to tell me how to hang up'
Me: 'There's proably a big red button somewhere, probably with a picture of a phone on it' Mum: ' Oh yes! It says 'end call' on it'
Clearly nothig has changed.

Our stay in Nkhata bay went too quickly but we had to start heading south or we would never have made it back for the start of term. We spent New Years in Cape Maclear where there is also a lot of partying but there are far more tourists whereas we had spent most of our nights in Nkhata bay with the locals. We still had a good time though, depite a wee bit too much alcohol on new years. Standard. I even ended up working on a couple of bars over our stay which was fun, although the shooters bar work deinitely contributed to my inebriation on New Years Eve.

Finally on January 2nd we ended up back in Blantyre where all the fun had begun and we are now back in Nsanje. Despite an amazing holiday it is so good to be home. We were almost away for 4 weeks and having my own bed and Geoffrey meowing in the morning is normality and comfortable and I won't be rushing off again too soon. Having said that, we head to Blantyre on Friday to meet the new Project Trust volunteers who are in Malawi for 8 months. I'm so excited to meet everyone and plan some meet ups. For now though, lesson plans and the like are my evenings. I am surprisingly into the whole planning side of things despite my record back at home! I tidied my room today. I know. I am a changed woman! Admittedly there's nothing like as much stuff in my room in Nsanje but still, I did it! Our house is now beautifully clean and tidy.

Today we went monkey hunting. We didn't find any even though we brought bananas and mangoes and everything! It was rather dissapointing but we are planning to try again soon and no doubt we will have some hilarious monkey-related anecdotes and monkey-starring photos very soon.

So, Happy 2011! I'll do my best to continue my updates.
Thank you so much to everyone who sent me Christmas emails/letters/cards. I had so much post when we got back from our holidays and it was a lovely welcome back home. I am attempting to reply but I can't promise too much. Even if my replies aren't long or quick, please know that I really appreciate everything from home, even if it's just a ramble about your life (actually, I especially like those) so if you have a spare minute in the near future drop me a note.

Love to everyone!
Chloe xxx