Our Travels
(sorry if you’ve already read this in e-mail form!)

We arrived in Lilongwe on 11^th December, (followed by our luggage 24 hours later) for a three week holiday in Malawi and a trip to Zanzibar.  After two days in Lilongwe, we took a deep breath and headed to the bus station.  The journey was to Cape Maclear on Lake Malawi (Becca enjoyed having a small Malawian child on her lap for some of the journey, but fortunately she stayed on the bus).  We met Claire and Matt there and had a great few days in the beautiful surroundings relaxing by the lake, swimming, snorkelling and enjoying the local band (5 small Malawian boys who would perform an impromptu concert for a small fee - we're not sure if they take overseas bookings...)  Sadly this was not to last forever, and our next stop was the city of Blantyre in the South and its famous Queen Elizabeth Hospital for a bit of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine tourism (we heard a lot about it on our course)...  

Training for the Malawi Olympic Gymnastics Team?

Sundowner G&Ts

Life on the Lake

We then flew from Lilongwe to Dar es Salaam and took the boat across to Zanzibar (something that I had vowed that I would never do again).  Fortunately this time the boat was fine, and we all arrived unscathed to the stunning Stone town and enjoyed Tanzanian beer as the sun was setting and delicious street food.  The next stop was Pongwe beach on the east coast for four days in tropical paradise, which involved more swimming, snorkelling, walking along the beach and inventing 'Coral Boule' which provided hours of entertainment throwing bits of washed up coral along the beach.  We were very sad to say goodbye to Claire and Matt who had to fly home, and consoled ourself with another beach trip, this time to Jambiani beach in the south where we spent Christmas (somehow we ended up having a candlelit dinner on the beach under the stars - mainly thanks to a powercut...).  It was strange having a hot Christmas day and we missed everyone at home.  

Sunset in Stone Town

Jambiani Beach

Christmas on Jambiani 

It was time to start the long journey overland back to Malawi following another (fortunately) uneventful boat trip back to the mainland.  Highlights included seeing zebras and giraffes as the bus sped through a national park, and various other bus journeys involving chickens, new born babies and patients from Karonga hospital. We eventually stopped for a couple of days in North Malawi and climbed a mountain up to Livingstonia, a Scottish missionary town that had more in common with a national trust estate than anything else we had seen in Africa.  Another two buses (involving multiple baboon sightings) took us to Nkhata bay where we spent New Year with two very nice French people, a lot of people on gap years and some very excitable Malawians (one who took a particular liking to Becca called "Guacamole toast" - we're not sure if that was his real name but his brother ensured us that it was).  We partied until the small hours and then had a brief snooze before catching the 6.30am bus back to Lilongwe.  After seven bus journeys in six days lasting a total of 33 hours, we are now getting ready to cross the border to Zambia and on to St Francis Hospital tomorrow.  

We will be sad to leave Malawi which we have really liked - the people have been so friendly and cheerful despite the obvious poverty, and the countryside and lake so beautiful.  However, we have heard good things about Zambia (we met a Dutch chap who had cycled 1800km across the north of Zambia in 2 months!!! as part of his overland trip south from Holland to South Africa, so far taking 13 months), and we are actually looking forward to starting work.