Southern Malawi
We haven’t met many families traveling with kids, but in Zambia we were lucky to meet a really lovely French family who were also waiting for Malawi visas. We arranged to meet up again for a few days at a campsite alongside Lake Malawi. The boys were delighted to spend 5 days climbing trees, completing treasure hunts and building sandcastles with Mahout and Abel. Each night the security guard would diligently rake the beach immaculately flat, bulldozering through their sand city, only for them to rebuild again.
One of the most memorable experiences of Malawi was driving on Palm Sunday. Catholicism in Malawi sure looks like fun!
After a short detour to Lilongwe to collect our Mozambique visas (which was a lot less short than hoped) we headed back to the lake one more time at Cape Maclear. This end of Lake Malawi is a national park protecting an amazing diversity of freshwater cichlid fish amongst other wildlife. We arranged a boat trip to a small island where the snorkelling was just mind blowing. It’s hard to describe how blissful it feels to be swimming in a huge expanse of water surrounded by tropical fish, but yet the water is so fresh and clear that it’s tempting to drink it as you swim.
After our snorkelling we stopped on the island for a fish BBQ under a small, thatched sun shelter, and were joined by some national park wardens who wanted to share our fire. So far, so idyllic, until I noticed a bright green snake in the roof of the shelter. You should have seen how quickly the wardens jumped out of the shelter. They told us it was probably a Green Mamba (incredibly poisonous and aggressive, spitting snake) but that they couldn’t kill it because it’s protected in the national park. But then, after some failed attempts to persuade it to leave the shelter, and realising the lunch fire was going out… they told us that actually they did need to kill it. So one brave soul went into battle with the angry snake, armed only with a long stick. On closer inspection of the (dead) snake, we think it was actually just a harmless bush snake, but it was all pretty exciting at the time.
This turned out to be only our first of three close encounters with snakes over the next few weeks. By the time we reached Mozambique we were pretty chilled about finding them in the shower, in the boys’ bedroom, etc. etc.