We climbed aboard the minivan, once again crammed to the gils with human cargo, and set out from Mzuzu's central bus terminal. The first stop was the gas station where not only was the van loaded with petrol, but almost every passenger got out and filled up a jerry can or two. These were then loaded back into our van, most of which were stowed under our seats. A strange series of thoughts passes through your mind when this happens, primarily along the lines of: "If anything rams this van we're absolute gonners. We'll be torched before we even get out of our seats" (if indeed the description of "seats" isn't too generous)

About halfway into the journey, the van pulled over. Not unusual, these things seem to pull over every twenty or thirty feet in order to: a) hack off everyone on board who is trying to actually get somewhere. b) try and enter the Guinness book of records for the most overcrowded passenger vehicle on the road. Sadly this stop was to address the thud, wop, thud, wop, thud wop noise coming from the back. You've guessed it we'd got a flat. Probably from the excessive weight being placed upon the tires, but who am I to guess?

Naturally we didn't have a spare. So it's all off the bus and time to sit on the side of the road with all the bags, while the van headed back to town to fix the problem. No great drama. The van would be back in "ten minutes" That is definitely 10 minutes in Africa time... (ie any bloody time within the next millennium.) Well after waiting for a good while, and watching with increasing dismay as the locals abandoned the bus in favor of anything else passing our way we managed to flag down a truck. For only 75% of the cost of the bus fare the good trucker was willing to drive us to our destination. Excellent. Or so we thought. We hopped in the open bed of the truck and proceeded down some horrifyingly steep, dubiously surfaced roads towards Lake Malawi. By the grace of God, pure chance, or the white knuckle grip we'd adopted, we made it to just over 5km from town and a police road block. At this point we had to alight as the truck to our destination was in fact taking an entirely different course from us at this point. Three choices:
1) Wait for the original van, who'd no doubt come looking for his lost flock (and more pertinently his lost fares)
2) Wait for a passing vehicle and try to hitch
3) Walk

We opted to go under our own power, we figured it was the safest way, despite the mid-day heat and distance to cover with our packs. As it transpired it wasn't such a bad choice. Sure we were in desperate need of a shower when we finally made it to Nhkata Bay but the walk was fun. It took us through some great scenery and we enjoyed plenty of friendly interaction with the locals we encountered on the way.

The town of Nhkata Bay on lake Malawi is widely regarded as a backpacker's paradise. It's supposed to be a place where backpackers show up intending to stay a few days and leave months later, so we headed down there with high expectations. All the lodges seemed to be much the same from our reading of the reviews in the Lonely Planet, so we decided to stay at Big Blue, the first lodge as we entered Nhkata Bay.  (We were walking after all, and really needed that shower!!)

Perhaps staying at Big Blue was our mistake, or maybe it was just a bad time to be in Nhkata, (A big festival was going on a 2 hours drive South of the Bay and most residents and tourists were off to attend the big party...) but for some reason we didn't discover that backpackers paradise that we were expecting.

 
Sure the lake is nice (despite the fact that it's infested with bilharzias) and the living is cheap, (and it is pretty cool to see the third largest lake in Africa...) but we didn't find anything to keep us there for more than a few days of R&R. In addition, walking through the village was anything but a welcoming experience. It's not that people were openly hostile but within the community there seems to be a bit of frustration that the tourist invasion hasn't resulted the promised influx of tourist dollars.

So, from here, we will head back up the hill to Mzuzu where we'll try to arrange transportation to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.  

PS - Happy Birthday to Mark's Mum!