Along the Lake

After breakfast, we checked out and made our way carefully down the mountain, stopping at the Mulunguzi Dam to take a look around. We had to pay MK 200.00 to walk out onto the wall and look down into the valley below. A sign on the banks made it clear that there were a number of things that you couldn’t do whilst enjoying the area around the dam, some of the instructions were quite graphic….

Rules are stated clearly here…no chance of any misinterpretations…

We strolled along the dam wall and whilst we were doing this, a local man came wobbling across from the far end of the dam wall on spindly legs, carrying four wooden poles, each about six metres in length… Sweat poured off him, running in rivulets down his back. Allan hurried towards him, offering to help carry the load. Naturally the poor guy had no idea what Allan was trying to do, and at one point, I thought he was going to turn around and try and make a run for it…back into the forest from whence he had come… Allan persisted and eventually the guy got the idea, and together he and Allan carried the logs over the remaining section of the dam wall… Once they had got back onto the road, in typical fashion, the guy asked Allan for money!! Allan in turn advised him that the cost of assisting him was MK 50.00 and held out his hand… in no time at all, the saplings were back on the guy’s head and he was once again wobbling off on his way to sell them as firewood. I managed to take a photo of Allan assisting in the carrying….

Allan gets busy… Carrying poles across the Mulunguzi Dam wall…

We finally left Zomba at 9.45am. , having first refuelled the bikes, and after having bought water at the local “supermarket”… We headed north, back up the M3 to Liwonde, via Machinga, over the Shire River and just after the town centre, turned right onto the road to Mangochi.

We passed the settlements of Mpale, Ulongwe and Nkumgulu on the western shores of Lake Malombe, before rolling into the outskirts of Mangochi. This town is situated at the very southern tip of Lake Malawi itself, and is the gateway to the area on the eastern shore of the Lake, and onwards to the Mozambique border town of Mandimba…

We rode through town under a darkening sky and headed northwest along the lakeshore on the M10 to Monkey Bay. Evidence of severe flooding was clearly visible on either side of the road. Huts had collapsed, fields of maize had been flattened, and stretches of the road had been completely washed away. We rode on short stretches of tar, followed by long sections of gravel in between them… The road was littered with shallow potholes, and we had a little fun, riding at speed and trying to dodge them all…

I had mentioned Club Makokola to Allan whilst we were still in Zambia, as he was looking for a place on the lake to relax for a few days to update his website. When I saw the sign for this establishment, I signalled to Allan and we turned off the main road and rode down a wide and well maintained gravel road… You could tell by this road and the beautiful shrubs lining it, that this was Malawi’s premier lake resort… The hotel is set right on the beach, the bar leading down almost to the water’s edge, where you are able to board a motor launch for a “jolly” out on the lake… Allan wandered about, saying, “Now this is what I’m talking about!!” over and over… I think he regretted having dawdled in Livingstone and Lusaka… We had a quick cold-drink and a packet of crisps, and sat watching as a storm blew in over the lake, heading directly for the western shore where we were sitting…

A storm heads over the lake toward Club Makokola, where we stopped for a short break…

I could see the little cogs in Allan’s head begin to rotate, and I held up my hand and said,

“Don’t even think about it!!” Without even asking, I knew what he was thinking…

“We can’t afford this place,” I said firmly, getting up from my stool and heading towards the exit. “But it’s the low season, perhaps they’ll give us a good deal…” he whined…

He went over to the reception area and began his negotiations… I strolled on towards the exit, determined not to be swayed from my purpose today… I was getting to Nkhotakota, no matter what…

Allan efforts were in vain for once, and he walked back to where we had parked the bikes with a wistful look on his face… I put my rain suit on while Allan returned to his usual cheerful mode, and entertained the various staff members who had gathered to see us off…

Just as a light drizzle began to fall, we headed back onto the main road and turned north again, following the lake shore. We managed to stay ahead of the rain, experiencing only light showers as we motored towards Monkey Bay, past Boadzulu Island, and turned west onto the M10, a gravel road which would have been hell, had we had to ride it in the rain. This was the same road that I had ridden down with Peter and Carol on our way to the lake a week ago… Thankfully, the storm had moved off to the south of where we now were and we could ride the gravel with confidence. Although there were many potholes, we still managed to maintain speeds of 60 to 70km/h and I was enjoying the experience. I rode much of this section one handed, as I was using my Cybershot to video our progress.

Allan has yet another altercation with the local livestock, this time on the road to Salima.

We passed through the village of Chantulo, and soon thereafter were flagged down by a group of young boys selling catfish. We stopped to chat to them and Allan decided to take a break at this point. We watched as other kids fished in the streams that crossed the road, others herded cattle coated in mud along the water filled ditches that lined this road for kilometres. There had been heavy rain here since the previous weekend when I had travelled this road with Peter and Carol, back from the guesthouse on the lake. It was amazing that the road surface had not been badly affected by this rain. Obviously the Chinese engineers working on it, had got the run-off areas right!!!

We stopped again near a large Baobab and were immediately surrounded by a large group of mystified villages. I had my tinted visor on, and without flipping it up, I walked towards a bunch of kids intending to say “Hi,” to them… They took one look at the “Alien” and ran helter-skelter for the huts behind the Baobab, one of the smaller children bursting into tears as he went… Allan then summoned a group of old men and their sons to come and sit with him under the tree. I filmed the scene using Allan’s video camera, while he asked various questions about their lives here in Malawi and how they managed to exist without things such as social welfare… He was surprised to learn that one of the old guys was about to set out on a three or four kilometre walk, to go and buy a cake of soap… It was an interesting half hour, and made more special for me by the fact that not one of the group asked us for any money when we left… A simple people, living a simple life… The gentler side of Africa…

Allan calls a meeting with the locals in the shade of a Baobab tree…..

After convincing the kids that I was not there to eat them, they came sheepishly back to have photos taken with the man on the “biggest bike”…

We continued along the gravel, and I used my camera again, to shoot some film along the way, holding it with my left hand while managing to steer and accelerate with my right…quite a feat, I can tell you!! This came to a rather sudden end, when I hit a large pothole and had to choose between the camera and a hospital bed… The camera crashed to the ground as I let go of it and wrestled the bike back into line… A young girl had seen this happen and ran over to where the camera was lying and then ran up to me with it, holding it out to me and saying, “eh, sorry mister, sorry mister..” I thanked her, gave her a Chipiku pen from my tank-bag and watched as she ran back to her hut on the side of the road, shouting for her siblings to come and see what she had been given… I felt a tear in my eye as I got back onto the bike and opened the throttle to catch up to Allan, who had not seen me drop the camera and had ridden on ahead…

We finally came to a short strip of good tar, where I opened up the taps and took the bike through a series of gentle curves, at 150km/h until I came to the t-junction on the M5 to Salima. I was happy to have come though the 49km of gravel road without any mishap, and this short dash of speed at its end was needed to expel the adrenaline build-up that had taken place during the ride… Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!!

We rode the 70-odd kilometres to Salima at a cracking pace, as I had impressed upon Allan that we still had a long way to go to get to Nkhotakota before dark. We refuelled in Salima and briefly considered going to the Livingstonia Beach Hotel at Senga Bay, just 21km away, instead of breaking our necks to get further up the coast. We both agreed to keep going and took off up the M5, heading for the “Largest Traditional African Town in Southern Africa”, according to one of the maps we were using…

I stopped to chat to these young guys, fishing in the river in the background…

(Photo by Allan)

Although the road was narrow and crossed many single lane bridges, its surface was in good condition, and we made good time, crossing the Lingadzi and Nkula Rivers, which emptied into the lake to the east of the road. The settlement of Benga was almost deserted, as we slowed down to negotiate the potholes leading up to and out of it.

At about 3.00pm, after 49km of gravel, we came back onto the M5, passing this signpost, showing our final destination for the day… Nkhotakota, a bunch of kilometres away…

We stopped again at a roadblock, to take a few photos and shoot the breeze with the locals…

I rounded a sharp bend in the road and saw (too late!!) that the Lufilizi River had washed across the road, leaving sand and debris behind… I geared down and almost locked the back wheel, as I flew over a large sand hump and landed back on the road surface on the far side of the little bridge which crossed the river… Close call!! I slowed down for the remainder of the ride to the lodge where we were due to spend the night…

We crossed a wooden bridge, with only enough space for the bike and bicycles to cross, as the remainder of the bridge had been washed away… It was getting darker now, clouds scudding across the lake and blocking out the poor sunlight we had been able to ride in up to this point… We came across a large lagoon to west of the road, and for a minute it felt as though we were heading south instead of north. The lagoon looked like the lake, and I had to glance at the map on my GPS to confirm where I was!! The road goes over a very narrow split of land, perhaps a 100metres wide, separating the Chia Lagoon from the lake itself. An amazing piece of geography… I wondered what would happen when the Chia River flooded… I am certain the road would be under water, and was thankful that we had not encountered such an occurrence, for it would have meant a long detour back to Lilongwe…

We eventually came to the turnoff of the Nkhotakota Safari Lodge, and had to ride down a 4km stretch of testing dirt track… In some places the left hand track was a foot deep in water, in others there was thick sand… At one point we had to ride down a steep hill on the “middle-mannetjie” as the tracks on either side were actually small streams!! In poor light, this was no fun…

Our bikes, parked outside our rondavel, just metres from the beach and the lake beyond…

The lodge itself was a dilapidated collection of rondavels, in a nonetheless beautiful setting. There were only two staff members available, doubling as receptionists, chefs, cleaners, barmen and a host of other positions… There was no management to negotiate the room price with, and considering that we were the only guests that had been crazy enough to attempt the road to their establishment you would have thought that they would have been happy to put us up in one of the “Deluxe” cottages…at the price of a standard rondavel… You would have thought wrong!!

No matter how we tried, they refused to budge, apparently terrified that they would lose their jobs when and if the owner found out… Exasperated at having to pay the equivalent of about R250.00 each for the room, I rode my bike between the rondavels, taking a short cut directly to the front door of my room. Allan, ever the diplomat, chose to ride around the public area on the little road that wound among the trees, nearly dropping the bike on some thick sand along the way… It was now close to 7.00pm, and the sun had long gone… I was very annoyed to say the least, and became even more so when I discovered that there was no hot water, cockroaches climbing onto and into everything in the room and the mosquito nets contained holes which I could have ridden my bike through…

I refused to have supper or anything to drink from the bar, as I was determined that they would not take any more of my money, other then the exorbitant rates they had already charged us for this sub-standard accommodation… Instead, I fired up my little gas cooker, and had a mug of soup for supper, accompanied by a packet of lemon creams… I was certain that they were aware that to ride our bikes back to the main road in the dark would have proved very dangerous and that we had no choice but to accept their rates… They did not know the owners phone number, could not tell us when the manager would be back, and the only remotely intelligent thing they had to say, was “It had been laining arot on the Rake”…

Fishermen return to their fishing grounds in front of the lodge early the following morning…

The sad thing about this place is that it was recently taken over from the ex-pats who used to manage it, by a local Malawian gentleman, who it would seem, believed that the lodge would continue to be a money-spinner, no matter how bad the service was… It is in one of the most beautiful settings on the lake and has a fantastic write-up in the Lonely Planet Guide, which is why we chose to battle through the late afternoon rain to overnight here in the first place…The lakeshore was barely ten metres from our room and dugout canoes flitted silently across the lake, a few metres offshore, the fisherman waving greetings to us as they passed. Across the lake lay the highlands of the Lichinga Mountains in Mozambique… Beautiful… Africa…

Allan resolved to fire off an email to the authors of The Lonely Planet as soon as we could get internet access, but this was as angry as he got… I on the other hand threw my toys so far the following morning, that I had the two Malawians running for cover…

The fact that they did not have any change when I paid my bill cost them a few hundred Kwacha, as I was not prepared to leave any form of tip, and in the end, I left having short-paid them by about MK300.00 … “Explain that one to your “boss” in Dedza…!” I said as I stomped off to my bike and pressed the starter button… They stood gaping at me as I rode slowly out of the grounds of the place I was sure I’d never be returning to!! Not until a sign saying “Under New Management” was displayed on the main road leading here anyway…

Avoid… Unless of course you have money to burn to pay for substandard service and accommodation…in which case, you’ll love it!

© 2008 TBMH