Eventually it was time to leave Monkey Bay, so I bid farewell to Lake Malawi and after catching a ride down to the next town of Mangochi from one of the staff, found myself running #minibuslife:
yet again. The bus was almost full when I got there so I only had to wait about 45 minutes before it left. The dude sitting on my left was not in the best shape, and vomited a few times but I managed to dodge the stuff that didn't make it out the window.
From there it was down to Liwonde, where I tried and failed to get into the park. Not a big deal as I was heading to Blantyre and that was more of a pit stop than anything else. Stayed at this guy's small hotel:
and I'm pretty sure I was the first mzungu he'd seen in a while. The water worked but there was no electricity except for a couple of hours in the early evening when dude turned the generator on. No internet, obv. Even tho the hotel was on the main road that the bus passed along, the driver made me get off at the fuel station beforehand so I got to trudge a bit down the highway. Good thing my tent is super light.
My rungood continued when I found out that the staff of the Monkey Bay hotel was making a provisioning run to Blantyre, so I dodged chicken bus to there by waiting on the side of the road the next day for the staff to come by in the tiny used ford fiesta sized vehicle that the owner had just bought for these runs. I jumped in the back and on to Blantyre we went.
Blantyre is the cosmopolitan city of Malawi. And by that, I mean that it's just a city that is more expensive than Lilongwe and has no government buildings.
It did have a Chicken Cottage:
which I think I wrote a report on in the OOT fast food thread. I've been putting my foreign fast food reports in there off and on.
You are probably wondering if that chicken in the logo is wearing sunglasses.
Yes.
Yes, he is.
and here's the goods:
and yes, I totally saved the "chicken bites" container and mailed it back to myself as a souvenir.