oh transportation, what you do to me.

So...now that we've made it to Malawi, we are super excited to meet a friend that we knew from the states. She lives in Malawi and is a PCV. We met up with her and had some wonderful food and hot showers at this really nice backpackers place. It was wonderful to feel clean and sleep well before we started our journey. The next morning, our friend who will remain anonymous, said that in Malawi the bus system is really non-existent and they all hitch-hike.  I was really uncomfortable with this, but she said that during their PST they have "supervised" hitching lessons where their teachers write the number of the license plates of the cars they get into to make sure they get to where they're going alright. I was not comfortable with this, since in Rwanda we aren't supposed to hitch. She assured me PC was aware of it and totally cool with it in Malawi. We were picked up pretty quickly by this awesome British couple who have lived in Malawi for about a year and a half. They were 6 months pregnant and loving life while teaching at an international school in Malawi. We had a wonderful time chatting and getting to know them as we headed down south to a friend of our friend's site which is right on the periphery of a national game park. It was really cool because we took our first bike taxi's to her site. We rode on the back of a bike while a man peddled us about an hour to her house. It was really nice to see another PCV living in such a similar way as us with no electricity and no running water. We really enjoyed her site. The next day we went to the game park and ate lunch, lounged at the pool (which was awesome!) and saw some impala, warthogs, hippos, crocs, and really freaky looking birds. It was truly a relaxing day.

The next day we started our journey north to Nkata Bay, which is a really beautiful spot on the lake. We took the bike taxi's as soon as the sun started peaking and they could see. We waited for about an hour for a bus to come by. After we got on the conductor told us it was going to be about 4 hours longer than it should take so we only stayed on the bus for about 30 minutes before ditching it to find a faster ride. Generally, it wouldn't have been a big deal but we were hard pressed for time since PC is not lenient in any way about their vacation days and time away from site, (well PC Rwanda that is). So, we ended up catching a minibus which assured us he could get us to Lilongwe by 12:00 pm which was a fairly decent estimation with approximately 2 hours for something to go wrong. We were happy and jumped on. The place we were going up north had one bus leaving at 12:30 and we had to be on it or spend another night in Lilongwe. So, we arrived in Lilongwe at 1:00. :) So apparently he needed 3 hours beyond the actual time it takes for stopping and picking up every single living thing that was standing on the side of the road. Thankfully, another bus just happened to either be delayed or leaving. We jumped on and paid the fare. Then, Jarod walked around and realized another bus was actually full and pulling out of the parking lot so we asked for our money back from the first bus to go jump on that bus. He was not happy and refused to give us our money back (please keep in mind we are learning lessons with every step of this journey). Many Malawians got involved and demanded he give us our money since we hadn't gone anywhere and he lied because he said the bus was leaving but had less than 5 people on it. He finally gave in and we sprinted across the bus park to the bus that was "pulling out". As we were waiting for them to actually pull out, we sat for about 45 minutes. African conductors know nothing of time or can't actually tell the truth if money is involved.  But, we finally were on our way. It took about 3 hours past the amount of time it was supposed too and we arrived in Mzuzu around 8:00 pm. It was pitch black dark and the mini buses that are supposed to drive people to and from Mzuzu to Nkata Bay (about an hour away) had all stopped for the night. Awesome. So we sat there trying to figure out what to do. In the mean time, we were told Mzuzu had a foreign currency exchange and were planning on changing over some money and were literally almost out of money. A taxi driver was telling us he'd take us, but was demanding literally every penny of the currency we had left. We didn't know what to do. So, we walked over and sat while we tried to figure out what we needed to do to be safe but also arrive at our destination. We decided to just take the taxi and pray that the backpackers place we were going accepted American currency.

Around 9:15 ish, we arrived at our place we were staying. It was a little bit of a frustration seeing how the management couldn't seem to remember our reservations and hadn't reserved the chalet on the lake we had asked for. We were stuck in a room that had spiders and cobwebs everywhere. We both wanted to cry but decided whatever...we'd get over it. Jarod and I are not high-maintenance so obviously the place wasn't so good. The owner was what can only be defined as "white trash". Those are other peoples words but I definitely agreed. The food wasn't so good. The showers were mediocre at best. The place was throwing an "Easter bash presented by Black Magic Entertainment" which was planned to be 3 nights lasting from 9 pm to 9 am. We were told it was basically an all out orgy and every single place on the campus was being "sexed" in. Jarod and I wouldn't have known because we're old people and went to bed at 9:00.  The next day, we wanted to do excursions but all of them had to have 4 people to go and we seemed to be the only guests actually checked in or on the grounds at the time. So we lounged around on the dock all day and tanned, which was really nice and relaxing. The next day, some other guests took us to this really awesome place on the other side of town which was so cool and we hung out there and had an AWESOME time for the remaining day.

That night, we caught the first of our buses home. We started at 12:00 am on a bus which was really nice but it was only going 6 hours. When we crossed the Tanzanian border we tried exchanging money but the forex was out of Tanzanian shillings. There were people selling money standing around and generally they can be bargained with for good deals. Jarod was in the middle of bargaining when the bus started leaving him and he had to run to catch up with it...once he got on the bus we realized we had been ripped off and lost about 20 bucks in the exchange. Again I say, we're learning lessons all the time and figuring out that we're idiots when it comes to traveling...but we're getting there!!

Now, Jarod will finish our fantastic trip with all the good news. :)