Zomba Mountain and the weekend

Warning, this post is a long one!

a camera-shy monkey

Rach and Doctor walking down the road (with Doc's stolen plant from our lunch spot!)

A dead tree among the dense forest of the edge of the plateau

Large flower on the plateau

quite high up the potato path

at the bottom of the hill, walking past girls rolling down fire wood logs

the view of Zomba town and surrounds from halfway up the path

Doctor getting his breath, as Rach drinks in the view

the potato path

This blog is beginning to reflect only our ‘tourist’ activities. Sorry! At some point soon I will try to get some photos of real life and do a wee note on that (which I’m sure you will all await with baited breath…ooh, honey and banana sandwiches, exciting!)

This weekend just past (our 4th in Malawi, time is fair flying!) we had a practical day around Blantyre on Saturday involving grocery shopping; failing to find the guidebook to ‘day trips around Blantyre’ by the Wildlife Society of Malawi, which is apparently fantastic; failing to get good coffee as the good coffee shop was closed as the bloke who runs is had decided to go up to Mangochi; succeeding in finding Doogles guest house, and being allowed to eat our sandwiches by the pool and getting instant coffee to assist with our curry bellys from the night before –

An aside on the night before: Ross’s last night in town, so we met up at Martins again for a few Stouts and then headed next door to Bombay Palace. Sitting next door we could see when it opened, and so we headed in about 15 minutes after opening, only to find it was already well populated with a few other groups. We sat down and Andy munched his way through most of the dips and nibbles (which didn’t help his belly the next day). We ordered a fish dish, chicken dish and mutton dish. All were absolutely delicious! We were then presented with a pile of sesame seeds, which again, Andy devoured. We ordered a couple of authentic dishes for pudding and were pleasantly surprised to receive a sort of icecream type of pudding, along with Rachel’s milkshake type pudding. All in all, delicious! – now back to the weekend!

On Sunday (while Ross was still travelling, having set off on Saturday morning!) Rach and I headed to Zomba. This meant getting a minibus to Limbe (we were kindly picked up by some local folk to save us the 10 minute walk along the dirt track), and then sitting in a minibus at Limbe market observing…nobody at the bus ‘stations’ has any sort of clothing to indicate their roles but we identified a few roles:

• Driver (obviously)
• Conductor who rides in the bus and collects money, and communicates with the driver
• “Fakes” who sit on a bus which is trying to fill up so that it looks more full, and therefore closer to leaving – thus making people believe they will not have long to wait if they get on that bus – then get off the bus before it travels to sit on another empty bus
• And “ground staff” who advise travellers of which bus to get on for certain destinations

Our bus driver was pretty fast, which would have got us there in very good time if it weren’t for their ridiculous system of rules to break and rules not to break. Outside Zomba is a fairly permanent police check – certainly it’s been there the 3 times we’ve been through at weekends. The bus had too many adults in it (apparently children don’t count towards the total) for the number of official seats, so about a mile before the police check 2 young men got out of the bus. The bus then approached the police check, got through fine (without being asked for any ‘gifts’ – see Cape McClear post) and drove on until it was out of site of the police. It then waited for the 2 young men to walk through the police check and catch us up – a ridiculous waste of time given that we were about 5 minutes from the final destination. It seems customer service does not exist in Malawi, you get what you’re given, there is no effort to provide a good service in any aspect of Malawian culture (except perhaps the restaurant and bar industry).

On arrival in Zomba (which was the capital of Malawi until the 1970s and has a fanstastic building called State House for the President when he visits – the building has turrets and an army barracks near by!). We were accosted by a bloke ‘Steve’ wanting us to use his Taxi to get up the mountain. When we explained that we were crazy asungu and wanted to sweat our way up through the jungle he took us to meet his mate ‘Doctor’ (“Doctor by name, not profession”). It is advisable to take a guide if you are white to avoid ambush and extortion – a rare occurrence but worth avoiding. After 5 mins of haggling we got Doctor down to a reasonable price and headed off with him (via his house to get his donated Merrell trainers, and the army barracks to drop off the car he was borrowing from his soldier boss). Leaving the barracks we headed up a newly tarred road and onto the ‘potato path’ – so called as locals grow potatoes on the cool, damp Zomba Mountain Plateau, and bring them to Zomba market by the fastest route. The path was beautiful, and the weather perfect – mixed sun and cloud, not too hot, a cool breeze at the top. Doctor was a former guide, who now just drives for a living, so was somewhat out of breath but still managed a fair pace. I guess he wanted to put in as little time for his money as possible! (perhaps I’m being overly cynical). He was nice company, not talking too much but providing fairly knowledgeable answers to our questions. We walked through lovely vegetation of long grasses, large flowers and huge trees. The upper reaches of the slopes were very rainforest-like. At the top there is a very expensive restaurant with purportedly great views, along with all sorts of ‘traditional’ tourist tat and some fruit sellers. We managed to avoid all of these by walking on with Doctor, who by now had got the idea that we were not wanting to spend money, and heading to a great view point in the gardens of a cottage on the edge of the plateau. After speaking to the landlady we were allowed to eat our lunch on her steps, while looking out at the wonderful view (you could see across the plains, back to the Blantyre hills and across to Lake Chilwa and Mount Mulanje). I’m sure the views could be even better, as we had quite a hazy day. We decended by a combination of the tar road and the potato path – all in all a lovely walk with lots of butterflies. We also saw a troop of camera shy monkeys on the outskirts of town! Back at Zomba we jumped in another minibus and the fun began again…Safely back though, and more knowledgeable about the minibus business, we had home cooked popcorn (very cheap here) and beer on our patio. Good times!