Malawi: Relaxing at the Lake

This is a retrospective post since the events all occurred well before I was blogging :) It was written on 23 April 2008.

25Mar04: Lilongwe, Malawi
To be honest I don't remember much about Malawi except for our days at the Lake. In fact I think the night in Lilongwe & Blantyre were purely "necessary stops", purely there to break up the driving. It is Africa, folks ... that's why it's called over-landing, Places are miles apart!

26Mar04 - 28Mar04: Kande Beach, Malawi
By this point we've been living out of a bag for ages and the trip is very clearly starting to wind down with all the upcoming Beach stops :)

The days were spent mostly lazing on the beaches of Lake Malawi, meeting locals with interesting names :) I had my hair dreaded by Julius Caesar and we took a walk around the village with his older brother, Mel Gibson.

We also spent time kayaking out to a nearby island (the one in the pic) and snorkeling. I didn't think the snorkeling was all that impressive ... but apparently there are parts of the Lake where it's fantastic!

The weather was lovely and we even spent a night out sleeping under the stars. On one of the afternoon's, the boys played a friendly game of soccer against some of the locals. I sat by and watched with the many kiddies who'd taken to following us around, holding our hands.

This is where I snapped one of my favourite photos of all time (And it's damn hard to snap a secret photo of these curious kids!). They were fascinated by the feeling of the white beard stubble. And after sitting, holding my camera but not taking any photos (so they'd go back to ignoring it), I finally managed to snap this shot that captured their expressions of delight perfectly!

29Mar04: Blantyre, Malawi