Nando's

After 3 days at Kande Beach we set out on Thursday morning for the 4 hour drive to the capital of Malawi, Lilongwe.

When the Lonely Planet describes somewhere as "hardly awash with excitement . . . isn't particularly interesting . . . soulless" then you know your in for a rip roaring time.

Thankfully we weren't stopping in Lilongwe for its tourist sights. It was simply a good place to re-stock the truck and a the best place to camp for the evening between Lake Malawi and the boarder with Zambia.

The best thing we could find to say about Lilongwe is that it has a Nando's . . . and we don't even like Nando's!

Ordinarily you would have to pay us to go into a Nando's. We both despise the greasy chicken based restaurant chain and are constantly amazed at their popularity. Whenever you see one in the UK there always seems to be a queue 50 people deep out of the door. We just don't get it. And what's that rubbish about having to fetch your own drinks?

Since we left Asia a month and a half ago the food, on average, has been so dull that even Nando's looked exciting. So we put our prejudices aside and went in for some lunch at the only fast food joint that we have so far seen in Africa. The verdict - ok it was tasty but you still won't see me in that 50 deep queue out of the door.

After de-greasing after Nando's we left the excitement of Lilongwe behind us and headed to Mbuya Camp on the outskirts of town for another evening of high altitude, low temperature camping.

Friday was going to be another fairly long one on the road with a 9 hour journey to our next stop at South Luangwa National Park. We were lucky to spot some wildlife before we finished loading the truck. This massive 4 inch long praying mantis was sat warning himself in the early morning sun as we prepared to leave Mbuya Camp.

Pig day and cooking complexity

Everyone had been looking forward to the Tuesday at Kande Beach, a day that had been officially designated as pig day. We bought a pig from the local village and had it slaughtered so that we could have a hog roast. After wiring the gutted but still warm porker to a spit we dug a fire pit and spent the next 10 hours cooking/drinking until it was ready.

Even if we say so ourselves, the results were quite spectacular. Little Percy went down very well indeed! Even Simon Harrison would have been proud of our results.

The following day was our nominated cook day. In pairs, everyone has to take it in turns to cook dinner for the other people on the truck. Cooking for 22 can be quite challenging at the best of times but when you have to cook over a charcoal powered jico stove it adds another dimension of difficulty.

Just to make things even more tricky you also have to provide a veggie option too. We decided to do a beef and a vegetable chili.

Shopping proved to be quite a challenge as we weren't sure of the quantities that are needed to feed 22. We ended up buying far too much stuff and probably cooked enough for 40. At least there was some left for seconds . . . and breakfast! Best of all it looks like we haven't managed to poison anyone.

Apart from cooking and eating we had hoped to be able to do some freshwater snorkelling whilst we were at Kande Beach. Lake Malawi is supposed to be one of the best freshwater dive sites in the world with over 500 species of fish, more than any other inland body of water. However, most of the time we were there it was quite windy which caused large waves to be whipped up on the shoreline making it too rough to get a boat out. If you swim out from the shore there is the risk of bilharzia, a minute worn that can penetrate your skin and migrate to to your bladder. From there it can cause anything from a rash to kidney failure. We decided to give it a miss.

The one thing that nobody was able to avoid at Kande Beach was the dodgy electrics. Something had gone seriously astray with the wiring on site which resulted in the destruction of 1 phone charger a couple of camera battery chargers and nearly everyone getting electrocuted in the shower.

Truck on

We were sat relaxing at Mikadi Beach last Thursday afternoon when an overland truck jammed full of loud and obnoxious kids pulled in. The group also contained possibly the loudest Irish woman on the face of the Earth who's best mate had one of those Cybil Fawlty "machine gunning a seal" laughs. To say that our hearts sank was a bit of an understatement. We were thinking that we wouldn't be able to stand the evening in the bar in their company, let alone a fortnight squashed into a truck.

We breathed a huge sigh of relief when we found out that they weren't with our truck but a different one. Thankfully when our truck pulled in we were greeted by a really nice bunch of people.

So who's on the truck? In total there's 22 of us including the driver, Gavin, and his assistant/fixer, Summer. There's also 3 Americans (Alan, Mandy and Dan), 2 South Africans (Grant and Sue), 3 Kiwis (Jarred, Amy and Glen), 6 Aussies (Mat, Adam, Annie, V, Sam, and Adriana), 1 Italian/Australian (Mike), 1 Maltese/Australian (Nike) and 2 other Brits (Humza and Gaj - although Gaj does claim to be a Sri Lankan prince!)

After briefly meeting our travelling companions we retired to bed for an early night in preparation for a 5am start the following morning. The first 2 days on the truck were set to be the most difficult. 2 consecutive days of 12 hours on the road in order to cover the 850km to get across Tanzania and into Malawi. When we set off at 5am on Friday morning it felt a little bit like we were a bunch of Albanian refugees trying to escape from Sangate in the back of a lorry.

Part of the drive on that first day was through the Mikumi National Park. With the sides of the truck rolled up we had an excellent view of the wildlife and managed to spot elephants, giraffe, zebra, antelope and monkeys. We then made our way into the mountains to camp for the evening at a place called The Old Farmhouse near Iringa. The camp site was really good and was built around a fantastic Bedouin style tented bar. The only problem was that because of the altitude it was bloomin' freezing. We think it's quite possibly the coldest conditions we've ever camped in. Yes, it was even colder than North Devon.

After a freezing night in the tent we then had the pleasure of another 5am start (Liz is absolutely loving these early mornings) as we headed for Malawi.

Just before the boarder we had an interesting encounter at a filling station with a guy called Mr Cool (we're not sure if it's his real name) who became the unofficial black market money changer for the the truck. By using Mr Cool we managed to change our money over at a rate that was significantly better than the banks and currency exchanges. The only danger now is that we're all sat on a pile of counterfeit Malawi Kwacha.

Once over the boarder we made our way to the village of Chitimba on the shore of Lake Malawi. The lake is absolutely massive, 500km long and nearly 100km wide. Standing on the shore with it's golden yellow sand it feels more like a sea than a lake.

The following day those who were feeling fit (or stupid) enough took a 9 hour hike into the surrounding mountains to visit the Manchewe falls, a 50m high waterfall with a cave behind it. Apparently the local villagers used to use the cave to hide in when the slave traders passed through.

The next morning we hit the road again for the half day drive South down the lake to Kande Beach where we would be staying for 3 nights.