En route to Kande we stopped off at a 'cultural highlight of Malawi' consisting of an extremely rickety bridge over a river - made solely of bamboo stems. The bridge has been standing for over 100 years but apparently is still as useable as the day it was built!!! The group decided to test this theory and crossed the bridge all except Kim who chickened out 1/4 of the way across. A couple of peoples feet did go through the bamboo and the bridge creaked hideously but luckily everyone survived. Kim was relegated to the role of chief photographer and in the process got attacked by a horde of huge killer ants whose jaws had to be prized off her clothing. (Killer ants may be an exaggeration but they were huge and vicious looking!)

We then went to see the heritage centre (a small hut with some old tribal artifacts) where the extremely mad proprietor donned a strange pair of bamboo goggles, hat and furs and danced about like a lunatic while demonstrating the traditions of his elders. The sight of this mad bloke talking into a buffalo horn like it was a telephone asking his elders if he could show the german people (us! ???) his artifacts was too much for most of the group and we were too busy laughing to learn anything!

We spent 3 nights at Kande - camping on the shore of Lake Malawi again. Mark kayaked out to an island, leaping off 30 foot cliffs into the lake, while Kim chilled in a hammock reading a book and drinking beer! We also discovered the ancient American cultural game of....'beer pong' - basically you have to throw ping pong balls into the other teams cups of beer - if you get one in they drink the beer. Kim teamed up with Sue the tour leader and discovered that she was not a natural at beer pong and ended up having to drink all our cups of beer and the other teams too...oh well!