Chilling at Kande...??

27/05/10

Welcome to Africa. This has been one of the most insane and testing 24 hours I’ve had. Sitting on the bus in a hotel car park feeling very jaded, and very ready to leave the truck. Yesterday we left Malawi after a 3 night stay on the shore of Lake Nyassa, although it was a small miracle that we made it there. 100 km from Kande Beach the truck temperature gauge failed, upon investigation John found that the compressor for the breaks had sheared off its mounting and was swinging around inside the engine breaking stuff. It took him about an hour to fix this. We eventually set off with a piece of wood wedging the compressor in place. It was a bit of a wild ride into camp as the revs had to stay above a certain level to reduce the vibration and avoid shattering the wood and sending splinters through the engine. We rough roaded it at high speed down the 2km bouncy track before we screeched to a halt and the engine stuttered and died. It was an impressive enough entrance to bring out the other truck drivers and camp owner to see what all the noise was about. John and a whole collection of other people with good intentions and some novel solutions spent about 40 of the next 48 hours under the truck.

Kande Beach is a mecca for overland trucks, and while it is beautiful and spacious, it has parties every night with whooping fancy dressed teenagers running around the camp at all hours. Been there, done it, would rather they stayed in the bar and let me sleep. Yes, I’m officially decrepit. We got a few uninterrupted hours each night. The last night we finally managed ro get one of the cute beach fromt huts. That night the party was ‘magnifique’ ….crescendos of noise to beat all noise. Combine that with a hut that had a midnight ant infestation so bad I ended up with ants in my ears and up my nose, and I went off in desperation to try and sort out putting our tent up on my own. Much to my extreme frustration the lockers were all bolted and I had to go back to bed after a small private tantrum and suffer being crawled over. I got about one hour sleep that night. It was the only time in the entire trip that I was grateful for a 5.30 breakfast.

Other than the noise and the smaller wildlife, Kande Beach was fantastic. We went on a 2 hour horse riding village tour that took us at a leisurely pace past waving kids and choirs singing and clapping in churches for midweek practice. We got to wade through a 4ft deep reed filled flood plane and then finished off with a bareback swim in the lake before sunset. It’s a lot of fun but very painful if you’re unlucky enough to be sitting on an extremely narrow ex-racehorse. The next day we went for a dive in the lake. Lake Nyassa is huge and with the incoming wind it has waves big enough for body boarding. Getting the small 15 horse power RIB out through the waves was fun. The dive was nothing special, apart from being our first dive at altitude. We went round a small island made of boulders. There are sunken canoes, trees, and even an old VW jeep. For the excitement level of the dive it would probably have been best to stay on dry land as Nick managed to snap his mask as he entered the water, and then my underwater housing flooded and my camera died… not bothered about the camera, have more concerns for the memory card and the irreplaceable pictures.

A few days after leaving we heard that very sadly one of the Dutch convoy of football supporters who had driven all the way down from Holland, drowned in strong current in the lake at Kande Beach. How incredibly sad to have something so bad happen on a trip filled with hope and joy.