Into Malawi

The roads that took us out of Tanzania and into Malawi were amazing. Malawi has brought back flashbacks and déjà views of Ethiopia as children line the streets shouting, the only bonus is the fact that the children do not throw things. The views have turned to more lush rainforest type landscapes, with banana trees and leafy greens. It is very very humid and hot which makes riding a bit more of a challenge. Sleeping is also difficult as it has been storming in the night so we have to have our tent flys on, which makes it like a sauna in the tents.

We saw this “End of the Dangerous Zone” sign along side the road as we left Tanzania however at no point was there a sign that told us we were “Entering the Dangerous Zone” so we were quite surprised to see this sign as we rolled by… Well thankfully we made it out of the Dangerous Zone, with no problems. We are on our day off beside Lake Malawi which is a massive freshwater lake. There is a chance of the parasite Bilharzia in the water (a small microscopic snail that swims up your ureter and causes you to excrete small amounts of blood in the urine until you are anemic and it can only be gotten rid of with a special antibiotic), also my toe is questionably infected right now from where the nail came off, but alas I could not resist the turquoise water and it was such an amazing swim that I decided I would be okay with getting the parasite for the cost of the amazing swim. I got another bout of sickness this morning and spent half of my rest day throwing up. We now have a lot of climbing (uphill) to do, to get out of the valley that Lake Malawi is in, up to Lilongwe in 4 days, just over 650km to our next rest day where I am hoping to do some scuba diving if all goes well. I just booked my next hotel break in Victoria Falls which we will stay in the Zimbabwe side, hopefully logistically it all works out, it is our last two day rest days in a row before the end of the trip,