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Before crossing the border to fuel stricken Malawi, we filled up the tank and both jerry cans in Mozambique, giving us fuel for about 1000 miles. The reason for the shortage took some time to get to the bottom of. It seems to boil down to a lack of foreign exchange resulting from the withdrawal of aid by a number of western governments, most notably Britain due to our ambassador being expelled. Rumours that he was kicked out for his homosexual practices appear to be a smokescreen!
Our first port of call was the mountain region of Mulanje, where I treated myself to a 70p haircut! Here we met up with a lovely Belgian couple, Jill and Andy, who we gave a lift to the foot of the mountain. We ended up travelling most of Malawi with them in the back of the Landy!
We picked up a guide to do what we thought would be a bit of light hill walking - it turned out to be a 7 hour trekking marathon up and down the mountain! We ascended over 1100m during the course of the day. While we got a bit more than we bargained for it was a magnificent walk and we were treated to some spectacular views along the way.
Our next stop was Blantyre followed by a bit more walking on the Zomba plateau. We then headed for Cape McClear on the shores of Lake Malawi where we chilled out on the beach for a couple of days.
Following some more fuel calculations we realised that we needed more diesel to cover all the places in Malawi we wanted to visit. On our way to Lilongwe we were lucky enough to stumble on a garage with some supplies and were able to fuel to Tanzania.
On our way north to Nkhata Bay we got fined twice (first fines of the trip!). Once very harshly for turning the wrong way down a one way street which had a highly ambiguous sign (and even after stopping immediately and attempting to turn around there was no mercy shown) . The second incident was for speeding, down hill, on the outskirts of town. They got us on camera so no disputing the offence!
We went off the beaten track to Nyika National Park, up in the hills and reminiscent of Scotland, but with Zebra roaming around rather than deer! We enjoyed some great camp fires under the starlit skies.
Our final stop in Malawi was the town of Livingstonia, high above the lake with amazing views all the way to Tanzania. The road up there with its 20 rocky hairpins proved to be an easy Sunday drive for the Landy!
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