January 20 & 21, Day 7 and 8 - Lilongwe to South Luangwe National Park. We had to leave early - what's new - as we had another border crossing to Zambia. As we were leaving, the front right window shattered as a couple of people we trying to shut it. Hope there is no rain!! The border crossing was relatively straight forward, thank goodness, as we were happy to leave Malawi after all the nonsense.

We stopped at a shopping centre for an hour in Chipata for water, wine of course and Wifi…and as usual, the Wifi wasn't working - I feel isolated from the world. This good and bad but mostly good. Not sure if I could stand this for more than a few months though. Your brain goes to sleep! Also took out cash from my RB Visa - the bank card doesn't work here. Banking as a foreigner is very 'hit and miss' so you really need cash. TD bank is hopeless, the people that work there are nothing but trained monkeys that cannot use their own brains to think or do anything that isn't on the 'list'. They could care less about their clients and every policy is written by lawyers who only know how to 'cover their butts. Pathetic. Apologies, I digress.

Then there it was - a proper pizza parlor. Tyhea and I shared a chicken and pineapple pizza and it was SO good. Tired of the 'not sure what it is' lunch meat and tomato, cucumber salad for lunch. After leaving, we stopped for lunch at the place we will be staying after South Luanga National Park - Mama Rulas. Nice but no service - the place seemed deserted and, you guessed, no wifi. I napped because my belly was full of really good pizza….lunch for everyone else was hot dogs - I loved that pizza more!

We left for the South Luagna Park and a place called the 'wildlife camp'. Off in the boonies beside the Luanga river and a stunning setting. The river is home to crocodiles, elephants and hippo's galore who come to feed in the campground at night. There were really neat 'tented cabins' with toilets inside but I was only able to rent a 'drivers room' - which was clean and JUST FINE. There were no activities so we could have a nice long hot shower and relax and watch the animals and birds at the river before dinner. After dinner, Sanjese (our driver) gathered us around a really nice fire to explain the system of marriage. At this point, this person is bugging me big time. He is always barking orders and saying things like - 'what did I tell you yesterday' when you forget where the utensils are or whatever. I do not understand his behavior sometimes - whether he is joking or real. He kind of went on and on about how the man can take more than one wife and how they pay - I really wasn't listening after the first 15 minutes. I was looking at the stars and believe I saw the constellation Cancer the Crab. It was beautiful but as I had to gaze straight up, I fell back off the cheap metal fold up chairs (oh yeah, FLITHY too) we were sitting on. I thought it was funny and others laughed as well. The Argentineans started to make fun and say oh too much wine - they were just rude. So I told them off and said goodnight. I think my 'group patience' is wearing thin! The next morning we were up and off by 6am for an early game drive for 4 hours. The park is beautiful and there are lots of Impala's, Elephants, hippos (in the water), and Water buffalo, Water Bucks, Puku's, Zebras and Giraffes - different from those in Tanzania. The Safari cars we are in are wide open so it is easy to see the animals. Unfortunately, we did not see cheetahs or leopards, for which this park is known. After lunch, we had an afternoon to ourselves. I had a nap and a shower then sat in the bar overlooking the river. We had to go over to the main office 500 meters away to pay for the evening Safari and as we came back - a hippo had come out of the water and was grazing not 50 meters away. Man they are big and apparently quite vicious, so after a picture, moved along.

We left for evening Game Drive at 4pm. We didn't see too much until the sunset. We watched it do so on the river's edge with a glass of wine and nuts! Gorgeous! After that the 'spotter' from the nearby village turned on a spotlight in order to see the nocturnal animal eyes. The guide and he could tell what the animals were from their eyes shining in the spotlight - amazing. We ended up seeing a cheetah, mongoose, several hyenas, lots of Hippos and elephants - very cool. Afterwards we had a great dinner of steak, and spicy sausage, pilau rice and cooked vegetables. Very yum! Had a glass of wine from my bottle with Valerie and Sam and then early to bed!