Winter Under The Sun (otherwise known as WUTS) – 8 July 2009

Days 70-86:
Lake Malawi / Chitimba / Livingstonia / Viphya Plateau / Mzuzu / Kande / Lilongwe (Malawi)
Luangwe (Zambia-Mozambique border)
Chipata / Lusaka / Siavonga / Choma / Livingstone (Zambia)
Kariba Dam / Victoria Falls (Zambia-Zimbabwe border)

Kev in Africa #8 – Malawi and Zambia
Kev in Africa #9 – Livingstone / Victoria Falls
Simba in Africa photos

I’d seen it all already: wild animals, awe-inspiring mountain ranges, golden beaches, calm oceans, native tribespeople… even naked bunjee jumpers. So what on earth was I still doing travelling around Africa, I wondered. Malawi had better impress me, I thought to myself…

To be blunt my first impressions of Malawi weren’t particularly grand. With an appearance not unlike the rest of East Africa, this thin country was unmistakably beautiful, yet certainly didn’t offer anything I hadn’t seen before. Africa’s charm may have been clearly evident via the locals who waved and yelled greetings at our truck, but I wanted something… well, something different.

The next morning my dreams were realised. Having got used to waking up at unearthly hours of the morning watching the sunrise was no longer a novelty but a convention. The Malawi sunrise is something special, though, especially as it rises over the beautiful freshlaker lake – creatively named Lake Malawi (the lake was actually named before the nation, so I shouldn’t really criticise it). This was the typical Malawi image I had been expecting to see, which really illustrates how little I knew about the country. The extent of my national knowledge was that Madonna had adopted a child from the country and that the flag consisted of a half-risen black sun. And there was little doubt which of those features I was more eager to see. (Clue: not Madonna)

The other person synonmous with Malawi is the great explorer David Livingstone who, to be honest, is also synonomous with pretty much every single other African country. Livingstone’s influence, though, was evidently felt here more than anywhere else; sitting high in the mountains was an old half-completed missionary settlement known as Livingstonia.

Livingstonia was a great disappointment. Not because the buildings were so old or that the population was so tiny. Not even for the fact that the local restuarant only served one dish (rice with chicken, for those of you playing at home). Rather, Livingstonia failed to meet our expectations because walking there took 3 hours. A 15km uphill climb was not the most enjoyable bushwalk of my life, but to be fair it wasn’t all bad and we all got some much needed exercise.

Viewing Manchewe Falls and subsequently getting the chance to swim in it partially justified the difficult trek. Before I left Australia, one of the things I remember telling friends was that I’d be swimming in waterfalls while they were busy studying. Here my ambitious dream became a surprisingly reality. I’m probably going to get bilharzia disease as a result, but that was a sacrifice worth making.

Speaking of bilharzia, Lake Malawi is the place where the disease is most common. Nevertheless, swimming in this warm freshwater lake – which takes up 20% of the country’s ‘land’ – was difficult to resist; how could one not want to dip their feet into the beautiful and transparent water? Such was the lake’s calmness that fish could be seen swimming at my feet as I walked. Unfortunately my uncoordinated attempts of catching them were in vain.

A few lazy days in Chitimba were followed by a drive down to Kande – a similarly languid beach area by the coast of Lake Malawi. Drive days are usually dedicated to filling in my diary, eating cheap supermarket biscuits and reflecting on life in general, but the Viphya Plateau was certainly a sight worth seeing. Yet another component of the Rift Valley – which never ceases to amaze me – this mountain range was a timely reminder of Africa’s never-ending beauty. Any doubts I had about Malawi had been well and truly erased.

‘I Want Kande’ Beach gave us all a few more days to laze around and forgot about life’s worries. With the hot sun bearing down on us and the waves breaking on my legs I was able to do some reading and write some music (a relativedly difficult task without the aid of a piano). But there’s only so many days of nothing one can tolerate. Hence I decided to challenge myself.

Horse riding was an activity I’d never really given much thought to, but when the opportunity came along I was keen to give it a shot. I must say that it was a more than worthwhile experience, but after definitely losing any chances of future fertility as a result of trotting I don’t think I’ll be too keen to try it again anytime soon.

What made up for my nut sandwhich was the novelty of being able to ride a horse through Lake Malawi. Fergus, my stallion, was incredibly reluctant to move once we hit the waves but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. For the past two hours I had been desperately trying to make Fergus stop eating and pulling me in random directions. Comparitively, sitting stationary was actually quite a relaxing change.

To celebrate my final morning at Lake Malawi I awoke for the sunrise once more. What made this experience more special was the opportunity to meet a security guard, who worked on the beach from 6pm to 6am every night. He and I chatted about all things, from job satisfaction (or job dissatisfaction rather) to faith, and by the time I decided to head back into bed (or tent rather) I had made a new friend. That night Joseph came to find me again, but this time with a gift in hand. I will never forgot the homemade keyring he gave me, especially considering that he went to such great effort to carve out my name: KELVIN.

Our last destination for Malawi was the nation’s capital of Lilongwe. Personally I didn’t understand why we were going Lilongwe when we could have easily gone the short way, but I figured that in Africa there are no short cuts and one has to  learn to appreciate each and every place. Lilongwe possessed a little bit of charm, mainly because I felt a little sympathetic towards the city. Spread out over quite a large distance the municipality resembled more of an outer suburb than a central business district. Most amusing was the sign welcoming us at the beginning of the Lilongwe boundary, that read ‘City Centre’. Not a single building, house or person was in sight.

What was most memorable about our time in Lilongwe was that it corresponded with the death of Michael Jackson. Considering that for the last 40-odd days world news was rarely sighted it was remarkable how fast we received this report. The rest of town were obviously following the story as well; replacing reggae music on the public radios was MJ, and it could be heard almost everywhere we drove.

My seventh consecutive border crossing – into Zambia this time – was thankfully just as stress-free as the previous six. Being my last land crossing for the trip (well, the last planned one anyway) I felt a little sentimental; never being able to trade money on the black market ever again could have potentially brought a tear to my eye. Thankfully I managed to withold my tears because I needed to save up my energy for four nights of… well, nothing.

Looking back on it all our introduction to Zambia was kind of like the calm before the storm (or should I say ‘the calm before the smoke that thunders’… no, wait, that sounds pretty lame, forget that). With Victoria Falls on our minds there was always an incentive to move on, but each stop we made was far from forgettable. In fact we even had the odd bit of fun. Enjoying ourselves on holiday, huh. Sounds unbelievable.

To summarise these few days we bought a tortoise, we managed to get through to a Zimbabwean border just for the fun of it, we survived a night’s sleep beside a dam full of hippos and we visited a crocodile farm – where an attention-seeking croc with a severe underbite entertained us. I also got my first dose of homesickness.

Amazingly, Zambia’s captial of Lusaka managed to cure my desire to return to Melbourne; in fact, the city reminded me of the eastern suburbs. Roads has painted markings on them, traffic lights actually worked and there was a surprisingly pleasant balance between concrete and flora. Such minor details had never really made me so excited before. But in Africa things change. Things change a lot.

I also learnt that things change very quickly. In particular, city seems to transform into country within a matter of kilometres. Less than 10km outside of Lusaka we were staying at a little farmyard where wild zebra, giraffe and antelope wandered around without a care in the world. When I wasn’t taking photos or having face-offs with these curious animals I couldn’t help but ponder what it would be like if kangaroos and emus were seen walking around somewhere like Camberwell.

I’m almost certain that more interesting activities took place between Lilongwe and our next stop – and also my final destination – Livingstone, but the excitement of the following four days seemed to virtually erase our recent memories. Being host to Victoria Falls – one of the seven natural wonders of the world – Livingstone was where it all happened. Every stone I had left unturned over the past two months was given a mighty shake down here.

Unfortunately there are no prizes for guessing where our first port of call was. For the sake of those slow individuals out there I will spell it out: V.I.C.T.O.R.I.A F.A.L.L.S. And for the sake of the fast individuals out there I hope you were smart enough to skip that last sentence.

Before this blog gets too silly, though, I must write about the spectacular nature of this mighty and world renowend waterfall. Known as ‘the smoke that thunders’ (hence my earlier comment), this noisy and constant flow of falling water was something to marvel. For not the first on my trip I was having one of those awe-inspired moments where my mouth was on auto-pilot. My catchcrys of “Awesome”, “Wow” and one of those amazed laughs were being replayed over and over by my voicebox without my conscious control. Vic Falls was an incredible sight to see and hear and I couldn’t have believe how close we were.

Too close in fact. Way too close. One of the thing that makes the Falls such a landmark is the misty water that rises up from the ground, almost like smoke. In fact, if weather forecasts were to be given for Vic Falls it would always be ‘Misty with rain’, because that’s exactly what it felt like: rain. Even at nightime, during the full moon lunar rainbow – a worthwhile yet relatively dear-priced sight – the water kept continuing its intriguing circuit. But it was during the day that I got really soaked.

As rain hurtled at me from one side a bright rainbow shone from the other. My natural instinct to take photos overtook natural logic, which states that water and electronic items don’t mix. Luckily for me my camera came out in one piece, but the miserable state of one of the other tour member’s cameras was a different story. My passport was another tale altogether.

Note to self: Do not get your passport wet.
Note to anybody reading: Taking my passport was necessary, considering that Zambia shares the border with Zimbabwe. So before you say ‘Oh my gosh, Kevin is such a doofus!’ please realise that I never intended for such a disaster to take place.

Sorting out passports, not to mention 8kg parcels that needed posting home and debit cards that refused to work in local ATMs, was a frustruating inconvenience to finish my journey on but these are not the things I will remember Victoria Falls for. My irritating traveller troubles may have added some unnecessary stress to my final days before my flight out to Johannesburg, but they certainly didn’t ruin my experience. No force on heaven and earth could have possibly made me think badly of this wonderful destination. Plus, I was now a multi-trillionaire. Well, in Zimbabwe anyway.

To occupy my time over the next few days I took part in three life-changing acitivites. The first of these was microlighting, an aircraft which resembles one of those flying bicycles from E.T. Flying above Victoria Falls and the Zambezi was a breathtaking experience that simply cannot be described. I could try, but I would undoubtedly fail. Sure, this may sound lazy, but neither my vocabularly nor the English language itself has enough powerful words to justify what I saw. I guess you’ll just have to try it for yourself.

The third activity – also my last for the trip – was also indescribable, but I’ll give it a shot. Named the Lion Encounter, this attraction involved walking with adolescent, albeit relatively large, lions. Considering how amazed I was to see a lion from a safari vehicle a month earlier (see previous blog) one only needs to imagine how I felt when given the chance to pat and even hold the tail of one of these creatures. Comprehending the fact that three lions were walking around me was quite difficult; in fact, it was all a bit of a surreal experience. Simbas aren’t meant to get along with humans, they’re supposed to attack us. So what on earth was going on?

Speaking of simba, my little Lion King toy which I had been carrying all over Africa got lost on this journey. Then, minutes later my digital camera decided to conk out. To my relief our tour guide managed to find my plastic figurine, but to be perfectly honest the latter problem was more of an issue. Looking on the positive side of things, though, at least my camera took its toll on the last day of my safari rather than the first. Nonetheless it was another annoyance to add to the list.

Those observant enough would have noticed that I skipped from activity no.1 to activity no.3. Believe it or not this was completely intentional; activity numbero duo is worthy of its own blog entry…

Having thrilled myself and pushed myself passed boundaries Livingstone was the ideal place to conclude my 45 day safari. From a social point of view I had made lifelong friendships and developed ongoing in-jokes, but on the last night – whilst listening to my fellow travellers reminisce about stories and ridiculous quotes for probably the tenth time – I knew it was a fitting time to move on.

I had forged myself a reputation for being the biggest consumer of food, something which worked in my favour at expensive resturants and even truck dinners. I had also established myself as the biggest spender at curio stores; it seemed my pocket was always running dry when around salesman. Finally, I somehow managed to forge a rather surprising knack for disappearing; my youthful curiosity with African often saw me wandering around independently and exploring the countries the way I liked to best. Now, the time had come to move on. Johannesburg awaited me and I couldn’t wait to return to a nice, comfortable bed.

But don’t forgot to read the next blog. Because its an absolute cracker!

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