The border the next day was much easier and we finally made it to Malawi! We arrived in the capital, Lilongwe, at lunchtime and just as we switched the truck engine off, the rain started and boy, did it start. The truck roof started leaking and my bag and laptop got soaked! Upgrade! I ended up sharing a dorm with Kian and Kyle which worked pretty well. After lunch we headed into town to do some much needed toiletry shopping and internet stuff before getting a taxi to the new town to the Africana Hotel, which sounded like the kind of place Kian and I belonged as the Lonely Planet said it was where the business people and government folks hang out on a huge patio. Ha! Fooled by the LP again. We drove through various industrial estates and kept asking people as our taxi driver had never heard of the place (which is always suspicious right?!). We finally found it and it wasn't quite what we expected - yes there was a big terrace but there were plastic tables and chairs and no view! Hmmm. Well, the joke was definitely on me as I had pitched this as a fancy place but we had a few beers and enjoyed ourselves anyway. For dinner we ended up in Don Brionis, a restaurant owned by an eccentric English guy, which was pretty nice.

We were due to leave the following day to head to a beach on Lake Malawi but because of the national fuel crisis in Malawi, we were stuck! The campsite called everyone they knew in other areas of Malawi to see if there was fuel but no joy. Olly went out with the truck to source fuel and, as always in these situations, something else went wrong - the clutch plate went on the truck. Great - so even if we could find somewhere with fuel, we couldn't actually drive there to get it! So, I spent the whole day sitting around drinking beer before heading out for pizza with a few people in the group. All set for an early night, I decided to have 'just one drink' in the bar when we got back to camp and then got sucked into 2 shots with Marcus and Olly. 2 shots became several more coupled with cider, beer ad goodness knows what else and about 12 shots later, I staggered to my room. Liz and I were just settling down for bed when we heard some commotion next door and discovered that Olly and Tanya had gone back to Marcus' room and passed out so Marcus ended up bringing his mattress into our room and bunking on the floor. Well, despite being knackered, then the fun started. A soon as he lay down he passedout and started snoring so Liz and I got our make-up out and started drawing on his face - eyeshadow on the eyes and eye liner on his cheeks (smiley faces) and a big eyebrow across his forehead. We both had tears streaming down our faces, it was so hilarious (guess you had to be there!). Unfortunately by the next morning most if it had rubbed off but it didn't stop Liz and I giggling and making Marcus paranoid that something had happened to his face. At first he thought we had shaved his eyebrows off; then that we had drawn them in. This joke carried on as we got everyone to ask him what was different about his face; I even got Charles (our cook) to mention it!!

Feeling a bit worse for wear the next morning, I got up for some tea and then had a fry-up to ease the pain, before heading into town. In the meantime, the clutch plate was fixed, we managed to get enough fuel and we finally set off at around 5pm (after a false start as the clutch played up again - yikes!). We had a horrendous journey, stopping on the road at about 10pm for some soup. Everyone was knackered and we finally rocked up at 1am at a crazy hippy place run by 2 totally (and probably permanently!) stoned Swiss guys!

After a brief stop in Mzuzu for supplies, we arrived at Chitimba on the banks of Lake Malawi (also known as Lake Nyasa). At 580km long and 75km wide, it's the 3rd largest lake in Africa and 8th in the world. It was pretty impressive, almost looking like the ocean stretching out in front of us. We camped on the beach which was lovely and ventured out to a local market where I bartered with various stalls and managed to pick up some cool wooden stuff (hope I still think so when I get it home!!).

I'm way behind on my blog due to the intermittent internet access and even more behind on uploading photos as the web is so damn slow. Still, latest pics are on picasa: www.picasaweb.google.com/lindylou73

Needless to say, I am still having a blast and loving Africa - definitely a few places on the list to return to!