Managed to spend almost all of my bond notes while in Zim, so didn't need to deal with another black market forex guy:




on the way out. Took a bus up to Lusaka from Harare. Border crossing was fine into Zambia, but we all strangely got a patdown when re-entering the bus after processing border control, despite no luggage being checked:



and no, they aren't shy about their touching.

Lusaka was still in the middle of a cholera outbreak when I arrived, so I skipped the food stands in favor of the grocery stores, which worked out pretty well when I found this sweet Slush Puppy machine:



that's right, I went full USA#1 and got two of them. Also got the green on a different day.

Much more importantly, I also found this place:



which is like a fish & chips place, except... it's goat & chips. This is pretty much the best fast food concept of all time outside of maybe the shawarma place.

The menu is of course goat everything:




including goat shawarma:




and lots of other types of goat. I've never understood why goat is not more popular in USA#1, given how healthy it is compared to beef. Kinda tempted to start a goat farm at some point, not gonna lie.

Lusaka also marked the start of non-stop mosquito netting:




over the beds, which is a damn good thing given it's smack dab in the middle of the endemic malarial zone.

Ja, because you look so much like a terrorist.

Maybe you could open a combo EnL/GnC place, sort of like the KFC/Taco Bell joints.

I'm still amazed at how pervasive English is everywhere, unless you're only taking pics of English signs.

When I was looking up Dr. Z's claim that chicken is the most consumed food in the world, I learned that it's actually goat (though this seems to be a little controversial), followed by pork.

I hope you never sign you on as navigator.



Chop,

That's a big stretch of light air. Perfect for recharging your batteries, or sending you over the edge while hand steering.

p4b - English is the official language of: Namibia, Zambia, Botswana, and Malawi. It's one of the official languages of South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe. Mozambique, where I am now, is the first country I've been in here where English is not the or at least an official language. Reflecting on the colonial history of much of Africa, this is not too surprising.

Oreo - seems doubtful that it's goat. Looks like it's pork, closely followed by chicken from a brief googling. Also looks like goat is indeed getting more popular in USA#1. I better act fast on the Goat & Chips gambit.

de cap - I think p4b was referring to the Argentina mention wrt Antarctica.

Call it “chop’s eat and lick goat shop”

Or maybe not

How have I missed this thread? I've got so many questions.

I knew the Dutch were heavily involved, and I remember the Brits too, but I didn't realize the Brits were so widespread.

Oh ja, the southern most city on earth is in Argentina. I think there are officially no "cities" in Antarctica.

Lusaka is a grungy dirty city. Didn't stay there long, just a couple of nights. Got my goat shawarma fix, and then it was time to get on the 04:00 bus to Chipata, the eastern border town adjacent to Malawi. The bus was a pretty standard African big bus:



absolutely jammed with people and their stuff. When I got on, a woman was sitting in the window seat I had picked out the previous day and had reserved. I showed her my ticket but she dgaf and just kept sitting there, refusing to move. It was 04:00 so I was not really in the mood to fight and just sat down next to her in the aisle seat, assuming that it was hers. This ended up working out much better for me as the luggage storage under the bus was completely full and I had to keep all my bags with me. Since I now was in an aisle seat, I was able to just dump my stuff in the aisle like everyone else had done.

Seat Thief was not content stealing only my seat and decided to go after my foot space as well:



so I ended up using her as a pillow for payback since she didn't really fit entirely in the seat. We ended the trip 10 hours or so later as buddies.

The ride to Chipata was standard. Slow going, with a stop in one of the larger towns:




those brown things on the tables are dried fish:




which were absolutely coated in flies for the most part.

Unusually, the bus provided a drink and small snack in the middle of the ride. I declined the snack of some weird-flavored potato chips, to Seat Thief's great dismay, but gave her the weird fruit juice they offered me next, which contented her.

This was the back of the bus:




and like a true tiger, I did not cry, despite Seat Thief gobbling down a bunch of those dried fish during the second half of the trip, with bits of dried fish getting pretty much anywhere they could get within a 2m radius of her mouth.

Chipata was pretty horrible. I had decided to stay the night there if the bus arrived late, or just continue on into Malawi if it arrived at a reasonable daylight hour. The latter happened, so I had the bus driver recommend one of the taxi drivers at the bus stop to get me to the border, and ended up with this guy:



after being swarmed by different drivers initially upon exiting the bus. They are very aggressive, especially when they see someone who is obviously not from the area, and I had people trying to "help" me by pulling my bags away to carry them, etc. I'm normally very chill and laid back, but I had to light up a couple of these guys to get them to back off.

The taxi ride was a pretty miserable experience. I briefly mentioned this before and promised a write-up, so here it is:

Upon arrival in Chipata, the bus was swarmed with touts and taxi drivers. At least 30-40 of them, all crowding right around the door. I had a couple try to take one of my bags from me as I got off to "help" me, but I retained a tight grip and told them to let go. They surrounded me very closely asking where I was going and offering services. If you aren't already used to this it can be disconcerting, so be prepared if you haven't experienced it before - this is also something that pickpockets take advantage of given how closely people crowd your personal space and bump into you. You need to stay alert.

I had already spoken the driver and had him recommend a taxi for me. This didn't work out very well, as the taxi driver he recommended was unfortunately a scammer.

After some negotiation with the driver, we agreed on a price and conditions. 100 kwacha (about $10 USD) from the bus area to the border for me alone, or 50 kwacha if he picked up anyone else along the way, no more than two additional people. Payment on arrival. After setting terms, I got in the car. Initially he wanted 80 kwacha as a shared rate or 250 for me alone, which I laughed at, given the default rate is 15 shared and 100 alone.

Then the bad stuff started. First, the driver had a currency trader get in the car and try to cheat me with the sleight of hand currency swap (they show you X amount, then try to give you X-Y amount by removing some notes). This was to exchange Zambia Kwacha for Malawi Kwacha. After initially quoting a truly ridiculous exchange rate of something like 45MKW-1ZKW (should be somewhere near 70-1), he then tried sleight of hand. For 200ZKW, He showed 14500 MKW in the form of seven 2K notes and one 500 note, then incompetently tried to remove 4 of the 2000 MKW notes to hand me a total of 6500MKW. I told the him to get out and also called him out on his scam attempt. He seemed far more embarrassed about how easily I had caught him than being embarrassed about being outed as a scammer. His friends were nearby and started laughing at how easily I had caught him and called him out. They thought it was very, very funny.

After that, the driver immediately went to a fuel station where he demanded I give him 50 kwacha for fuel. I refused, he kept asking for lower amounts, and I kept refusing. He then said that 100 kwacha was not enough to get to the border, so I asked him why he agreed to that rate. He had no answer and just asked for kwacha again. When I refused, he asked how I would get to the border if I had to walk. I assured him I would have no trouble finding another taxi, and he gave up and just paid for the fuel.

About halfway there, he told me the new rate was 200 kwacha, and that if I didn't like it I could walk. I told him to pull over so I could get out. It was raining pretty hard so I don't think he expected that. He tried to negotiate further and started badmouthing me and telling me what a horrible person I was for taking advantage of him.

It was right around this time that I noticed that a bag of food I had brought with me was missing. I had definitely put it on the seat next to me, the only way it could have disappeared is by being stolen by the currency scammer. Not a lot of stuff, but still irritating to be stolen from.

We eventually arrived at the border, where I pointed out the theft, which the driver and his friend who had ridden with us found very funny. At that point I said I'd pay no more than 70 kwacha and that they didn't even deserve that given their scam attempts, thieving scammer friend, and general attitude. The driver got upset, and his friend suggested we talk with the border police, which we did. The police didn't seem to care much and said I should pay the full 100 kwacha, which I did.

We had a small crowd watching at this point in time, mostly border currency traders waiting to get my attention. When the situation had resolved itself and they approached, I told them that I would not be exchanging any currency with them due solely to the dishonest taxi driver, and they they should know that they were losing business due to his actions. They were not happy with him and he immediately took off. I figured that there's nothing I can do to affect the taxi driver, but perhaps they will do something if they know he is costing them money. They kept arguing that it was unfair that they were being punished for his actions, and I agreed with them and encouraged them to take it out on him later. I'm not a vindictive person but I make an exception for scammers.

The exit process from Zambia took about 10 seconds. That was followed by a 15 second walk over to the Malawi immigration office. There were two forms to fill out for a single entry visa, which was processed in about 5 minutes. From there I met up with a Malawi driver, and he took me to Lilongwe with no issues and lots of advice about how to spend time in Malawi.

Had a good time in Zambia overall, despite the bitter taste at the end from the scammers and the thief. Hopefully they choked on my stolen biscuits.

The ride into Malawi was nice. Private vehicle with a driver I had found on the internet. He took me into the capital city Lilongwe, which is a very small city. More of a town, really. Malawi is a poor country and most of their economy is based on agriculture, so they don't have any large cities.

This is downtown Lilongwe from my hotel in the city center:




Lilongwe may be small, but it is still big enough to address any needs one may have:




and the hotel I stayed at had pretty decent mosquito nets:




and useable internet when the power was on. That wasn't always. In fact, during the six weeks or so I spent in Malawi, the power went off every single day for anywhere from 1-24 hours depending on the day. Malawi generates almost all of their electricity via hydroelectric from Lake Malawi, and the water levels have been low the last few years, so they have rolling outages to compensate for this. I think I read somewhere that they will need 5+ years of above average rainfall to get back to their original model and prevent more outages. Solar isn't really used due to the expense.

The Malawi Kwacha has not had a great history of stability, but in the last couple years things have improved. Like many other countries with these issues, inflation has caused prior denomination currency to become effectively worthless, which creates a weird situation where sweet coins like this:




are worth about $0.013 USD, but it's tough to find any because no one bothers using them since they aren't worth anything. I did manage to get a couple, which is great because what coins have baby elephants on them!?! How lucky!

Speaking of currency, I've mentioned this before, but different note values often have different exchange rates in many countries. Took this photo to show that:



it's not on the sign, but a USD $100 note was being bought at 730. All those numbers are #:1, of course. So if I showed up with 100 $1 bills, I'd get a rate of 650:1, and if you showed up with a single $100 bill, the rate you'd get would be 730:1. I'd walk away with 65k kwacha, you'd walk away with 73k. The condition of the notes also matter - a note that is dirty, has a tear, or has any kind of wear (including fold marks) often gets a worse rate as well.

Due to the above, and having had my USD notes refused in the past for ridiculous objections of things like "too many fold marks", I made sure to bring only pristine condition notes this time. Also made sure to only bring 2013+ issue notes, aka "big heads" as they are often called. Lots of places won't accept the "small heads" anymore due to fears of counterfeit notes and difficulty exchanging them. I seem to have less issues with the counterfeit fears than other nationalities, due to my USA#1 passport, but I've heard some lol stories.

Congrats on becoming a father.

This stuff like with taxi driver is exactly one of the reasons, why I hate travelling.

Great stories and pics, keep 'em coming when you can. Big

Howard - I'll come up with something.

lapka - taxi drivers are the worst of humanity, but there are so many positives for travel that outweigh things like them for me.

jalfrezi - tyvm. Always appreciate hearing that people are still enjoying the thread, and posts without photos in them definitely speed up the page load times, which is why I've decided to average 4-5 photos per post now.


Hung out in Lilongwe for about a week, not doing much other than catching up on life and enjoying a bunch of Malawi chicken. Made a half hearted attempt to check out a nature reserve in the city but didn't go thru with it due to a ton of bad reviews online and general laziness. Tried to hunt down some of the older Malawi coins but without much success, as everyone had thrown theirs away. Also tried to mail myself some stuff only to find that Malawi charges about 4x what any previous country had charged for mail. A 90g (3oz) letter full of receipts and stuff was quoted at $14 USD! I still have that letter. Also a bunch of coins that I should have mailed from Lusaka.

After a week of chilling in the city, I decided to take a bus up to the northern end of Lake Malawi, then take the ferry back down to the southern end. The bus was pretty decent:




and made the usual stops where people would approach the windows with stuff to sell:




but one new thing for this trip was that we had a flat tire. We all heard it blow about halfway thru the trip, and the bus driver just kept driving like nothing had happened. Some people told him to stop, and he just kept on going. Then some people started to yell at him, and he finally pulled over in the next town to fix it. Bus accidents are not uncommon in Southern Africa, and there are lots of stories of people dying when a driver did something stupid, so people don't hesitate to let the driver have it when they think he's doing something wrong.

Some of the bus companies have bad enough safety records that they get suspended by the governments or get shut down by protestors whose family members have died. When I went from Harare to Lusaka on King Lion, I was loling pretty hard at some of the reviews and their overall safety record. Had to sign an indemnity waiver before they would issue me my ticket, including contact details for my next of kin. They also said a joint prayer as the bus was pulling out of the station, and we had another prayer upon arrival, thanking the baby Jesus for allowing us to stay alive. This is standard - they gave us comment cards to fill out and one of the questions was: "Upon departure, was there a safety prayer?" looool

So we pulled over for the fix:



(I about lost it when I saw that tiny bottle jack they were trying to use)

which ended up with the driver going under the bus for some reason:




and after an hour and change we were on our way again up to Mzuzu, a decent sized town near the north end of the lake.

We made one more stop just outside of Mzuzu for people to get off and for others to load up on the baked goods:




and then arrived just after dark in Mzuzu proper. I ended up splitting a local taxi to the hostel I had found, and was happy to score a decent room:




although I was sad to see two mosquitoes waiting for me on the net itself:




cheeky bastards.

They died, along with some others. Had to make some repairs in the net with a roll of tape I carry around, but things ended up OK:




and I made it to breakfast the next morning without any bites:





Full English Breakfast variants are extremely popular at lodgings in southern Africa. I'd say 65-70%+ of the places I've been at have offered them, and more like 85%+ for South Africa itself. Malawi was no different. That thing on the top of the plate is some kind of hash brown item, not sure what was going on with that.

It's kind of weird as a USA#1er because FEB is not at all popular in USA#1. The idea of baked beans or a roasted tomato as part of breakfast is strange for most Americans, outside of some specific areas. I usually default to whatever the local breakfast is if I can, but I'll FEB as well with no problem. Had an interesting one in Lesotho that was basically a bowl of stewed tomatoes with curry spice, a poached egg, and bacon bits. Very similar to shakshouka.

Thread remains awesome, chop, despite your manifest flaws.

I've had far worse looking English breakfasts than that here in England, despite the weird bacon.

Quite good hotel FEB posted by British comedian David Baddiel, currently on tour:--



Can't see anything wrong with that except the lack of button mushrooms, which British Rail certainly used to include at their highpoint in the 1970s.

Great updates, Chop!

A coworker was in Malawi recently for work. He spent a day in Lilongwe and said that they have built a huge conference center in the city. Did you get to see it? If so, do you have any idea who would want to organize a conference there?

He stayed in Blantyre for most of the trip and really enjoyed the people there. Unfortunately he was there for a malaria-related project and got to see some sad stuff (kids in coma due to cerebral malaria). Luckily for him, and everyone else involved, there were no deaths for the week he spent visiting the hospital.

The drought has actually helped lowering the number of malaria infections, so I guess there's a silver lining to it.

El_Timon - didn't see the conference center but read about it. Most likely the conferences there would be either agriculture or NGO related if I had to guess. Cerebral malaria is no joke, that's pretty much the worst variant.



So I stayed in Mzuzu for about a week or so enjoying the semi-decent (for Africa) internet when it was turned on, and hanging out with some of the locals:




It rained a lot, and didn't feel like walking thru this very often:




which was the road the hostel was on, so I mostly just chilled at the hostel with occasional walks into town when things were drier.

One of the places I went was Soul Kitchen:




which of course I had to check out, being from DC and knowing a thing or two about soul food. That guy was high as a kite and kept trying to get me to buy his "local art" since he was a "local artist". I gave him some food instead and seemed content with that.

Here's the menu:




but I just pointed to the chicken on the grill:




and went with that, since I knew it had recently been close to a heat source.

The hand washing station:




had an interesting sign:



which is intended to help reduce the spread of cholera (a serious problem in parts of southern Africa) as well as typhoid and all the other usual suspects.

Kinda jealous of the foot pump, tbh.

How was the chicken?

Didn't buy anything from the market:




because I didn't have a reliably clean water source for washing stuff.


Mostly just chilled in the lobby of the hostel or in my bunk when mosquitoes showed up:




I know how much OOT loves feet, so there you go, don't say I never did nothing for ya.

Only stayed in the bunks a couple of times when the rooms were fully booked, other than that I splurged for the private rooms, splurged being about $25USD compared to a $8 bunk. The private rooms were a good place to do the every-so-often task of going thru all my stuff and seeing what I could get rid of. Not much, unfortunately, as I have this travel thing down pretty well these days.

Here's a look at pretty much everything I had at that point, other than the clothes I was wearing at the time and my phone for taking the photo:




The stuff in the upper right is the camping gear - tent, sleeping bag, and the orange thing is an air mattress. The blue is a fake silk sleeping bag liner which is worth its weight in gold.

I still have almost all of that with me, though I gave away a roll of tape and have mailed back a bunch of those coins.

Here's what it looks like packed up:




and here's how I travel with it:




The brownish bag bungeed to the duffel bag is the camping stuff. The duffel bag is mostly clothes and generic stuff I don't access much. The backpack has all the electronics and the stuff I use often. The blue stripes on the duffel bag are painter's tape. Both for differentiating my bag from others as well as for just an easy way to store some painter's tape which is super super useful.

I'm probably going to get rid of the camping stuff in the next few weeks as I doubt I'll do much if any camping when I get north of Kenya. Currently in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Most likely going to head west to Rwanda, then north into Uganda, then east into Kenya over the next 6-8 weeks before heading north into Ethiopia. I plan to camp near Kilimanjaro and in the Serengeti, as well as in southern Kenya for a Masai Mara visit, but I think that's probably about it. Will sell the camping stuff to a backpacker headed south, or just give it away to someone heading that direction. Most people go north -> south so shouldn't be too tough to find someone in Nairobi who can use the gear.

ElSapo - the chicken was so-so. One weird thing I've noticed in almost everywhere I've been in Africa is that any and all grilled/bbqed chicken is almost always overcooked to the point of extreme dryness, while the chips/fries are crazily undercooked to the point of being not much more than chewy wet potato slices. If you want the chips/fries anything close to what a USA#1 palate would consider cooked, you have to ask for them "brown" which also doesn't make much sense since they don't ever approach being brown regardless. But they do start to resemble something that has had heat applied to it.

I wrote a post on lolFacebook about USA#1 food cravings a few weeks back. Had my first one recently, after 7+ months away and it was for...

drumroll...




yeah, I know. Don't judge me. Normally it's for Pizza Hut pepperoni pan pizza, which is often my first meal getting back to USA#1 soil. I crave it even more quickly after sailing on the ocean - then it's just a matter of weeks. When de cap, de cap bro, and I made landfall after the Hawaii -> Seattle run, our first meal was burgers but de cap, saint that he is, brought me a large PHppp that night and watched in amazement as I demolished all but one slice in a single sitting. Could have got the last slice too but that would have not been for the best. For reference, I'm 5'10" /178cm & ~170lb / 77kg.

Was kinda surprised it wasn't PHppp this time. Probably would have guessed CFA waffle fries if I was going to have made a non-PHppp guess.

So many pens? And this green thing. I assume that it is for killing flies. Don't know what is it called in English. How about using a folded newspaper for hunting flies?

After Mzuzu, it was time to head on to Nkhata Bay, a tiny town on the NW shore of Lake Malawi. The plan was to take the ferry south to the bottom of the lake and sleep under the stars along the way. Yeah, that didn't happen.

First up was getting to Nkhata bay. That was via shared taxi, so I went into town and found the taxi line, which is all random dudes with their beat to hell 20+ year old sedans that are mostly falling apart. They were moving luggage around with this sweet device:




and those women are selling the bananas, if you're hungry.

I didn't want a banana, but I was kinda tempted to get one of these meat kabobs:



that dude is holding in his hand. The thing hanging from his elbow is a little cauldron filled with hot coals. He literally walks around cooking the meat as he sells the kabobs. That's the rear half of the taxi line, btw.

The ride to Nkhata bay was the usual - lots of police roadblocks, negotiations between the driver and the police for what the bribe would be to let us past, etc. We spent more time doing that than actually moving.

Eventually we did arrive, and I found the place I decided to stay at which is a dive "resort" aka dive shop with dingy rooms attached. Lots and lots of bugs there. I had to move rooms after waking up with a half dozen bed bug bites in the first room, but the second was OK. Bed bugs are so tilting because the bites itch like a mofo and also you are paranoid about them hitching a ride with you. I rarely put my stuff on a bed until after I'm pretty sure it's clear. Even if I'm sure, almost never put clothes or any kind of fabric item on it.

Went out for a few dives:



which were not great. Had never done freshwater diving before, so that was a new experience. The nice thing is that you don't feel all salty after getting out of the water. The not nice thing is you feel a little slimy. There wasn't much to see as the bottom was mostly mud and rocks. Lake Malawi is famous for cichlids, which are small brightly colored fish popular for aquariums, but they get old pretty fast. The night dive was pretty great, due to a school of predator fish following us around the entire time like a pack of dogs. They have poor eyesight so when our torches would light up a small fish, they'd pounce. Felt a little bad for the small fish.

Nkhata bay is a pretty small place:




but they do have an internet cafe:




and a pretty impressive fruit/veg market:




under "the big tree".

There was also a small thai restaurant there for some reason, and the food was actually dead-on thai, so I got my green chicken coconut curry fix which was a welcome surprise indeed.

They also had a small immigration building there for people coming across the lake from Moz, so I was able to extend my visa as well. The initial entry visa cost for 30 days was $75USD. The extension for 30 more days? About $7. lol.