“Iwalam” is Malawi spelled backwards . . .

Two excellent days in South Luangwa National Park included a sunrise and sunset game drive in an open air 4X4, unexpectedly finding a mini-van size hippo (not exaggerating!) eating grass outside our tent after dinner, watching a teenage male elephant have a temper tantrum (see video below) and seeing vultures devour a carcass, as well as seeing hundreds of birds and other animals. (The hippos woke us up later that night because the chewing was so loud!! See video below)





We headed south back through Chipata, Zambia then turned east and crossed the border into one of the poorest countries in Africa: Malawi. We went on to the capital, Lilongwe to restock our food supplies and grab lunch. Another few hundred kilometers and we arrived at Senga Bay on the shores of Lake Malawi. Lake Malawi is the third largest lake in Africa, and one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world. The next morning we watched the sunrise over the lake (and Mozambique on the far shore.) After breakfast, Katie played beach soccer with our Kenyan guides before we loaded the truck and went north to Kande beach near the town of Chitembe.

I headed into the village to explore and ended up playing a few games of pickle with the local kids. They were fascinated by the LCD display on our digital camera and seemed very entertained to be playing with two “mizungu”(swahili for white person). There were five other overland trucks at the campsite that night and the partying and noise went quite late. Read: we didn’t get any sleep and were slightly grumpy the next day. But with nothing on the schedule, we didn’t mind. We spent the day lying on the sandy beach, laughing at our trip mates' hangovers, reading our books and playing in the surf (the waves were huge considering it was a lake). The afternoon brought a multi-hour game of beach volleyball where I revealed my punishing block and utter inability to serve. We celebrated one of our Irish friend’s birthdays and were off to bed.

We spent our last two nights on Lake Malawi at Chinteche, where we spent hours bargaining and bartering with the locals for crafts. Katie and I developed a great good cop/bad cop routine and usually paid ~30 to 40% of the asking price(Read: still over market value). We were bummed to leave our freshwater paradise but we still have four countries to cover in the next 25 days.

Next stop Tanzania . . . .