Malawi ... "The Warm Heart of Africa"

My cottage on Chitimba Beach
Lake Malawi ... at Chitimba Beach

Howdee all!

I'm still well and really enjoying Malawi ... Malawi is real beautiful, unbelievably friendly and very hilly. It is not as lush and green as Tanzania, but still awesome views and landscape structures. Malawi is correctly classified as "The Warm Heart of Africa" ... the people are unbelievable friendly and polite. Lotsa children - who also beg and scream a little when you pass, but really not too much.

It is actually quite funny ... they always exclaim: "Give me my money" and "What is my name?" ... the odd thing is that they say these incorrect sentences thru out the country and not just in one area.

We spent a rest day on Lake Malawi ... absolutely beautiful and all I ever imagined it to be. I have wanted to come here for such a long time already ... and it was worth the wait. For anyone coming up to Malawi ... I can definitely recommend the camp we stayed at ... Chitimba Beach. Andre (my brother) joined us there on our rest day ... bringing lots of goodies and bike spares.

Thanks a lot boet ... much appreciated. Thanks to my fossils also for the chocolates, Richard for the Lindt Chocs and Lise and the gang for dropping Andre off.

It was real nice to see him again ... and he did well to cycle the next morning with us. Andre borrowed Dean's bike (thanks mate) ... and climbed the morning with us ... and was it a climb!!! For someone who has not cycled for a good year it was a real tough route. At least we had awesome views of the lake and surroundings while climbing, climbing and climbing some more.

The weather has been a lot cooler and threatening with rain continually ... yesterday went thru the real dark clouds and missed the rain by very little ... other riders got more than totally drenched!!! The nights are a little cooler as well and lotsa dew drenches anything left out at night.

We are off to Lilongwe tomorrow ... sitting in Kasungu today, 138km North of the capital. We have a rest day in Lilongwe ... before we attack the real long killer days in Zambia over the week that follows.

The traffic hear is quite minimal ... even along the well tarred national roads ... but the people do race along at high speeds and don't care much about the locals, kids, cattle and obstructions on the roads. We do seem to get some respect ... but the speed of the vehicles is still real scary!