Rach and I are currently lakeside, chill-axing (as our local friend says) beside Lake Malawi. The lake itself is so big (takes up half the country) that it has its own navy. It's also infamous for the freaky little snail worms that get under your skin and crawl up into your brain. But we've been assured that's only in the stagnant little pools (fingers crossed) as we've already been for a swim.

Our trip so far has been absolutely amazing. After our Masai Mara safari we ditched the monster truck and headed to the Serengeti in 4WDs. On the way into the Serengeti we passed some of the wildebeest migration where over 2 million wildebeest make their way across Africa. Pretty spectacular to see.

We also passed a Masai village and school made up of a man and his 34 wives and 121 grandchildren! Apparently this isn't exactly the normal go around these parts - normally they stop at 2 to 3 wives.

In the Serengeti we spotted loads more animals, including leopards hanging from trees and lionesses with their cubs. We drove right up beside four lion cubs just chilling in the grass while their mum hung out in a tree. Think the hippos have been my favourite so far though - their just so cute (in a really ugly and dangerous way!)

We'd been told that hot-air-ballooning over the Serengeti was spectacular so we forked out the $500 and trekked to the balloon site for dawn. Unfortunately, the whole time we were up there our guide kept spotting animals, only to be disappointed when they turned out to be piles on dirt :p The scenery was pretty impressive, but animal wise we were told it was a pretty quite morning. So at "champagne breakfast" after the ballooning we decided to get our moneyies worth by downing as much champagne as possible - and turns out safari hunting is even more fun with a couple of glasses of champagne under your belt!

Leaving Serengeti for Ngorongoro Crater we started to have some car issues. It started with breaking down in front of a bunch of Masai teens, who helped up out by giving the car a push for us, and ended when we once again broke down, this time approximately 2meters from a full grown male lion! We'd turned the engine off to watch him just sitting there and were pretty stoked with how close we were, until it came to turn the car on again. We ended up getting another truck to give us a bit of a push down the track and then shielding our driver from site as he jumped out of the truck, poped the hood and fiddled with something under the engine!

The Crater was the end of our Safari hunting, and the start of a 2 day drive (in our truck) and boat trip to Zanzibar, the beautiful island off the coast of Tanzania. It has a pretty sordid history as the main slave port of Africa for a few hundred years. After touring around the Stone Town city for a day we headed off chill out at the beaches for 2 whole days. Thrilled to be leaving our tents behind, Zanzibar was like a luxurious holiday from our holiday, happy hour cocktails, sunset cruises and all.

Setting off at 4.30am, we were back on the road to a new country - this time Malawi. Watching from the bus, it was interesting to see the locals get harassed as much as the Muzungus (white people). We watched as a local mini bus tried to harrang passers by into becoming passangers. They were incredibly perssistnent, to the point where the guy tried to drag a local boy by the arm into the bus!

In Malawi, Kande Beach was our destination - a beautiful little campsite on the banks of Lake Malawi. We have "up-graded" from our tent to a beach chalet right on the sand and a great place to spend 3 whole nights in one place. We went on tour of the local village - all the local children came out to meet us and just wanted to hold our hand and have their photos taken. One little girl latched onto my hand and didn't let go for about 30 minutes! Was worried her mother might think I'd stolen her!

We also made friends with a local boy name Chuld who's about 13 years old. He was holding up his finger as if he'd hurt it, and when I asked him about it he showed me he'd burnt it on the cooking fire. It was horrifically burnt - half the flesh was burnt off the underside of his index finger and it looked like it was getting infected. Apparently the local hospital doesn't really have much in the terms of medicine and they were just going to rely on local medicine. I gave him my tube of Betadine, and we worried he'd think that would fix it properly though so we also gave him enough money to get a but to the nearest doctored hospital and get seen. We'd heard his father was a bit of a drinker so we made his uncle take him, and were relieved when they got a shot and antibiotics as it really looked like the infection was in his knuckle .

Okay, so this is getting incredibly long and am running out of time, so will sign off now, and in my next post I'll tell you how we nearly started a riot at the gates to our hostel, were ripped off, and visited an amazing little orphanage set up by an English guy we met - has an incredible story behind it - haven't had a chance to check out the website yet but it's 3rdworldhope.org.uk