This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 11:42 and is filed under Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
After a fantastic New years party at Cool Runnings, me and James headed to Cape Mclear; a little village into a peninsular in the South. On our way out of town, we were dissapointed to find out that there was no fuel.. We checked out tanks and decided we could make it and were counting on getting fuel at our destination.. We cruised down the nice tarmac road. We almost had the road to ourselves which really helps you to relax a little and absorb the always fantastic scenery… 10 miles short of our destination, we were faced with rutted and corrugated sand to get to the village. To add to the fun, there was no fuel in town so we were going to be stuck there for a couple of days at least, preying for a fuel delivery. Malawians are all pretty friendly so I swapped phone numbers with the pump attendant so he could let us know when fuel was back in town…
We rattled, skidded and slid in the sand and finally made it to “Fat Monkeys” campsite, right on the beach. Sweeet !!!
There we met a great bunch of South Africans who were on their way North. We chilled out with them for a days and exchanged details. They gave us their addresses and demanded we stay in their houses while they were on the road. Brilliant.. That’s a common trend occurring with all the South Africans I’m meeting on the road. They’re bloody hospitable.
So as usual, I spent the next few days lazing on the beach, swapping stories with other travellers, walking into town and amusing the local kids with my white skin and watching the football with the locals in the beach bar. (Being an LFC fan is a little depressing though and boy, they love to take the piss).
Alas, all good things come to an end. With a phone call to the petrol station, I was told fuel was once more available so we packed up and head off the next morning..
The rain had been hard the night before and the road had turned into a muddy swamp. I was ok on my DRZ but James’ BMW with road tyres couldnt hack it and he had a topple which broke his “fisherprice” BMW plastic panniers…
After an hour of banging, hacking, screwing and bolting around on the muddy road his panniers were again usuable and we were on our way to blantyre… The last stop until Mozambique.
We spent the next couple of days in a bleek hostel in Blantyre. In that time we managed to get fined/bribed by local cops for not carrying out insurance documents with us, I managed to pay £90 for a tent I thought was £50 (and that was overpriced at that) and also meet up with some friends that we met at “Cool runnings” at New years. We went out drinking and then they offered to put us up in their house for a couple of extra days… Two days of creature comforts, BBQs, clean beds and country walks was just what the doctor ordered…
We were ready for Mozambique…….
January 22nd, 2011 at 11:21
teddy magnum, you really made a mistake going on this trip. you should give it up, take on a wife, two kids and a pet turtle named lucky.
signing off:
cowboy tucker
January 23rd, 2011 at 08:56
I know man… What was I thinking !!
Send my regards to lucky 😉