Hello Everyone!
Well, as you may have guessed, reliable wireless internet that would let us post pictures and stories has been very hard to come by in Namibia, Tanzania, and Malawi. We have a lot of great pictures from various endeavors, including an excursion with fur seals in Walvis Bay, Namibia and a safari in Namibia's Etosha National Park. It may be some time until we are able to post those pictures, so we decided to just post a recent e-mail that Lauren sent to our family, so that you can get a flavor of our life. We will fill in more details of our time in Namibia and Tanzania when we get more time and internet access.
That being said, here is Lauren's e-mail:
We're currently in Mzuzu, Malawi, just 47km from our next destination, Nkhata Bay, which is perched right on top of Lake Malawi, the second largest lake in Africa, I think. We've been looking forward to Nkhata Bay since we heard about it from our 3 British friends while in Swakopmund, Namibia. We're staying at a place/hostel there called Mayoka Village for at least 7 nights in a chalet right on a cliff over the lake, apparently. It's going to be really, really cool!
Malawi is also good, because it is very cheap. We will try to scuba dive in the lake, as there is a reputable PADI dive center called Aqua Africa that has been in business for a good while, and the cost is only $20 for a day trip. Just a short walk from Mayoka Village is a nice beach where we'll hang out and relax as well. We're super looking forward to it, as we've had a bit of a grueling travel schedule for the past week or so. We took a 26 hour train ride from Dar Es Salaam to Mbeya, Tanzania (it should have been 21 hours, but our brakes failed just before we were about to go down a long steep hill, so we stopped at a station to have them fixed. This was quite astounding to us, as most problems go unfixed in Africa.)
Anyway, we stayed the night in Mbeya at the same place as our two British friends, Pete and Beth (with whom we shared a train compartment to Mbeya), and rose very early to catch a bus called The Stranger Express to the Tanzania/Malawi border. This took about 3 hours and was quite interesting. We've got pics of me just off the bus at one of the stops along the way in a sea of locals wandering around with chickens in plastic bags up to their heads and other such nonsense.
In Songwe, we had to walk about 2km with our packs to the border and get out of Tanzania, then another 1km to the Malawi immigration office. Once through, quite easily, the four of us got a taxi to Karonga, the next stop along the way. It always takes way more than one step to get anywhere in Africa. At Karonga, Malawi, we stopped at an ATM because pretty much NOWHERE takes credit cards, and if they do, they charge you extra for it. There are only ATMs in a few towns/cities in Malawi. The people are much friendlier though, and it doesn't feel as unsafe as Dar.
THEN we four caught another bus for a two hour ride to Chitimba, where TJ and I disembarked and got lunch at a "restaurant," a thatched hut with a picnic table inside, complete with more chickens running around on the ground. The meal was yummy, our first of the day. I went out to the "toilet" which was also a thatched hut with just a deep hole in the ground, nothing else.
TJ and I then headed up a mountain to our hostel which is situated at the top of said mountain, 10kms up! We had our packs, 35lbs and about 45lbs each and it was blazingly hot. We made it an hour and a half up, about 1/3 of the way, when a truck came by, the back of which we were able to jump on (this is recommended by the owner of the hostel) and rode up the rest of the way, thank goodness. The hostel was really awesome. It was situated just on the precipice of a steep cliff. We had a Flintstones-esque hut with the necessary and ever-present mosquito net over the bed. The camp has no electricity and runs off solar power and car batteries. It was so peaceful and relaxing and we stayed there three nights. The showers were in huts as well and we stood on rock pedestals underneath comforting hot water (very hard to come by in Africa as well). We ate very well, though all vegetarian food, as meat is scarce and rather gamey (pardon the pun) around here. Veggies are good, but all veggies don't suit our bodies, as we were quite full of methane for the duration of our stay there. We hiked to a beautiful falls one of the days and found the entrance to a cave behind the falls where slaves used to hide from traders coming through. Good pics as well.
We hiked down the whole mountain yesterday, using shortcuts blazed by the locals and did it in just two hours. We then waited about 10 minutes in Chitimba until a bus came to take us here to Mzuzu. While waiting, we were alarmed to hear the sound of a distraught black sow tied tightly to the back of a passing bicycle. It was clearly on its way to being slaughtered and was squealing for its life. These types of things are very common in Africa. The bus that took us from Chitimba was ridiculously crowded. TJ and I were the only white people on it, and I had to sit on TJ's lap the entire time because people were so packed in. Of course, there were children with snotty noses that we avoided at all costs... tough though. Poor TJ had a very, very large buttocks on the side of his face for much of the three hour trip. I, on the other hand, was graced with the very close proximity of the common chicken in a plastic bag. Unfortunately, this chicken seemed to have lost its bag, so it was flapping its wings into my face (ahhh, disease!!!) and squawking a bit in its owner's less than tight clutch. No one seemed concerned with the discomfort. It was pretty hilarious, but also miserable at the same time. However, we made it to our hostel here, The Mzoozoozoo, and were happy to see a nice British guy who was running the place. We spent the night comfortably (though with lots of rooster crowing offending our ears) and got up early this morning to get to the internet and ATMs. As an aside, the roosters seem to be somewhat retarded, as almost all of them start crowing around 2am, when it is clearly still deadly dark. The fowl in Malawi are indeed very foul.
We went to the ATM this morning to get out some money. There is a stretch of banks and nine ATMs in one strip. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, every single one was out of order or did not accept our cards. We'll try again after we're done with the internet, though I highly doubt the machines will be fixed until the end of next week.
Unfortunately, we'll likely not make another blog post until we arrive in Morocco on September 15th/16th because there is definitely no wireless here in Malawi. They'll be lots of pictures and stories up then though.
Malawi is also good, because it is very cheap. We will try to scuba dive in the lake, as there is a reputable PADI dive center called Aqua Africa that has been in business for a good while, and the cost is only $20 for a day trip. Just a short walk from Mayoka Village is a nice beach where we'll hang out and relax as well. We're super looking forward to it, as we've had a bit of a grueling travel schedule for the past week or so. We took a 26 hour train ride from Dar Es Salaam to Mbeya, Tanzania (it should have been 21 hours, but our brakes failed just before we were about to go down a long steep hill, so we stopped at a station to have them fixed. This was quite astounding to us, as most problems go unfixed in Africa.)
Anyway, we stayed the night in Mbeya at the same place as our two British friends, Pete and Beth (with whom we shared a train compartment to Mbeya), and rose very early to catch a bus called The Stranger Express to the Tanzania/Malawi border. This took about 3 hours and was quite interesting. We've got pics of me just off the bus at one of the stops along the way in a sea of locals wandering around with chickens in plastic bags up to their heads and other such nonsense.
In Songwe, we had to walk about 2km with our packs to the border and get out of Tanzania, then another 1km to the Malawi immigration office. Once through, quite easily, the four of us got a taxi to Karonga, the next stop along the way. It always takes way more than one step to get anywhere in Africa. At Karonga, Malawi, we stopped at an ATM because pretty much NOWHERE takes credit cards, and if they do, they charge you extra for it. There are only ATMs in a few towns/cities in Malawi. The people are much friendlier though, and it doesn't feel as unsafe as Dar.
THEN we four caught another bus for a two hour ride to Chitimba, where TJ and I disembarked and got lunch at a "restaurant," a thatched hut with a picnic table inside, complete with more chickens running around on the ground. The meal was yummy, our first of the day. I went out to the "toilet" which was also a thatched hut with just a deep hole in the ground, nothing else.
TJ and I then headed up a mountain to our hostel which is situated at the top of said mountain, 10kms up! We had our packs, 35lbs and about 45lbs each and it was blazingly hot. We made it an hour and a half up, about 1/3 of the way, when a truck came by, the back of which we were able to jump on (this is recommended by the owner of the hostel) and rode up the rest of the way, thank goodness. The hostel was really awesome. It was situated just on the precipice of a steep cliff. We had a Flintstones-esque hut with the necessary and ever-present mosquito net over the bed. The camp has no electricity and runs off solar power and car batteries. It was so peaceful and relaxing and we stayed there three nights. The showers were in huts as well and we stood on rock pedestals underneath comforting hot water (very hard to come by in Africa as well). We ate very well, though all vegetarian food, as meat is scarce and rather gamey (pardon the pun) around here. Veggies are good, but all veggies don't suit our bodies, as we were quite full of methane for the duration of our stay there. We hiked to a beautiful falls one of the days and found the entrance to a cave behind the falls where slaves used to hide from traders coming through. Good pics as well.
We hiked down the whole mountain yesterday, using shortcuts blazed by the locals and did it in just two hours. We then waited about 10 minutes in Chitimba until a bus came to take us here to Mzuzu. While waiting, we were alarmed to hear the sound of a distraught black sow tied tightly to the back of a passing bicycle. It was clearly on its way to being slaughtered and was squealing for its life. These types of things are very common in Africa. The bus that took us from Chitimba was ridiculously crowded. TJ and I were the only white people on it, and I had to sit on TJ's lap the entire time because people were so packed in. Of course, there were children with snotty noses that we avoided at all costs... tough though. Poor TJ had a very, very large buttocks on the side of his face for much of the three hour trip. I, on the other hand, was graced with the very close proximity of the common chicken in a plastic bag. Unfortunately, this chicken seemed to have lost its bag, so it was flapping its wings into my face (ahhh, disease!!!) and squawking a bit in its owner's less than tight clutch. No one seemed concerned with the discomfort. It was pretty hilarious, but also miserable at the same time. However, we made it to our hostel here, The Mzoozoozoo, and were happy to see a nice British guy who was running the place. We spent the night comfortably (though with lots of rooster crowing offending our ears) and got up early this morning to get to the internet and ATMs. As an aside, the roosters seem to be somewhat retarded, as almost all of them start crowing around 2am, when it is clearly still deadly dark. The fowl in Malawi are indeed very foul.
We went to the ATM this morning to get out some money. There is a stretch of banks and nine ATMs in one strip. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, every single one was out of order or did not accept our cards. We'll try again after we're done with the internet, though I highly doubt the machines will be fixed until the end of next week.
Unfortunately, we'll likely not make another blog post until we arrive in Morocco on September 15th/16th because there is definitely no wireless here in Malawi. They'll be lots of pictures and stories up then though.
We love you all and can't wait to Skype soon.
Love,
Lauren and T.J.
