Lilongwe to Nkhata Bay

The latest in a series of sketchy African coach journeys, this one from Lilongwe to Nkhata Bay, a small tourist town on Lake Malawi.

The coach, due to set off at 11pm, doesn’t arrive until past midnight, and the seats are in a state of disrepair. At around 4 in the morning, the coach stops for around an hour, alarms blaring, until the driver and conductor can get it running again. We arrive into the nearest big city (Mzuzu) at 6.30 in the morning, and get off the bus into a giant rain storm. We’ve been fortunate so far to have avoided getting caught in downpours, but not this time. We need to get across town to the bus station to get a minibus to Nkhata Bay, so we’re forced to brave the deluge. Soaked, we arrive at the bus station and are mobbed by touts telling us that there are no busses to Nkhata Bay. I politely try to inform them that we’ve heard otherwise, whilst Katie straight up calls them liars. Sure enough, there is a bus to Nkhata Bay.

It is worth the journey though. Our accommodation, Mayoka Village, is perched in and around a small bay on the lake, affording views over nearby headlands, and across the lake to the shoreline of Mozambique (where the lake is called Lago Niassa). The lake is home to an array of different coloured tropical fish darting around the rocks.

We rest for most of the day, with Katie feeling slightly under the weather, but we look forward to getting out on the lake and snorkelling in this real-life dentist’s aquarium.Read more