8/5/13 Travel Travel Travel

                The last two days were super heavy travel days.  Harare to Lusaka took 10 hours direct on a windy road, and a border crossing from Zimbabwe to Zambia.  Then yesterday was intense! 5:00 bus from Lusaka to Chipata, cab to the border of Malawi, cab to Machinji on the Malawi side, combi (a small bus that stops a LOT) to Lilongwe-the capitol of Malawi, and another combi to Monkey Bay.  I pretty much stayed up all night, so the first few legs were fine—slept a lot! And even the combi to Lilongwe was pretty fast, so we decided to push all the way through to the lake.  We discovered that the conversion to USD was actually 390 Malawi Kwatcha to 1 USD, so we were pleased that it was not the 100 MWK=USD 1 like we had thought. Feeling much better about money, things started to fall apart about 75 km from Monkey Bay.  Our bus started to smell like burning as we wound through the mountains.  I was telling myself that it was probably people burning trash.  Maybe.  Anyway, our driver stopped and left us in “Monkey Bay” but it was actually the TURN OFF for Monkey Bay. Which was actually 12 KM away from us.  And that wall we were looking at was not the wall of our hostel, like he said. It was a bar. Luckily, not two minutes later, a truck came through and did take us to the hostel door.  Just that combi driver was a butt. We set up camp and fell asleep pretty quick. 

                And the sleep was actually pretty good-tent on soft sand is usually a good (slightly messy) bet. Waking up at the hostel was BEAUTIFUL! Full 9 hours of sleep, sunshine, lake. Ants everywhere, and a few stomach problems for a travelmate of mine, but both passed quickly.  We walked into town and got tons of fresh fruit, and returned to the camp for a day on the beach. Way worth it.  I finally feel like I’m on vacation. Maybe I’ll walk up the hill for a view in a bit!