We bid Kristina and Lucy farewell on August 10th and hopped a flight to Lilongwe, Malawi to begin our next two week adventure.
Our accommodation for the first two nights in Lilongwe was Africa House, a beautiful mansion which was previously home the Belgian Embassy.
When we first arrived at the airport none of the ATM’s accepted our card. We had a ride to pick us up at the airport so we asked him to take us to a legitimate bank with an ATM but we still had no luck. I could use my Visa card for cash so I took out a few bucks to hold us over to the next day. We also stopped at an Airtel kiosk to get a SIM card and data but after much hassle and paying for a card we couldn’t purchase any data. We were told the card was activated so there must be network issues so we should try again tomorrow.
After breakfast we hired a taxi to show us around town and to also try a few more ATM’s and purchase some date with our new SIM card.
None of the ATM’s would accept our bank card so I loaded up on cash using my Visa and then immediately paid it off on line once we returned back to our lodging. Our next stop was to purchase some data. This was important because we needed Google Maps. We found an Airtel kiosk, were told our SIM card had not been activated, paid for a new SIM card, loaded up on data and it was off to the races. We obviously got ripped off the day before.
Lilongwe is very spread out over many “Areas”. Area 10, Area 40 etc. except 85% of the areas do not connect so you can’t assume an address in Area 10 is close to an address in Area 11. Road construction is rampant in the city and traffic is horrible although the fact that there is road construction is a good thing, except without doubt financed by a country that has ulterior motives.
That evening we had a very good dinner at La Cantina, a highly rated Mexican restaurant near to Africa House. The food was great and nobody spoke Spanish although a large noisy table spoke “belt and road”.
The next morning we were picked up by a “Land and Lakes” representative. This is the company that we used to rent our 4×4 and book our accommodations throughout Malawi. We picked up our truck and rather than use Google Maps, used Maps.me to plot our first destination.
We’ve used Maps.me before but it seems everyone in Malawi uses this map service and as it turns out, it was excellent and we will use it for all future travels.
Five minutes after departure from the office and just as we got onto the city bypass road, we came to a police road block. We were waved over, I stopped, rolled down my window to greet the female police officer and was told I was under arrest for passing on a solid line! Well this is great way to start a journey.
The officer had a slight grin on her face, she was hard to read but I vehemently denied the charge. “ It was a broken line I protested. I passed a very slow moving vehicle with an L on the back window. No way did I pass on a solid line”! She continued to smile, wandered over to the passenger side of the truck, looked at the insurance decals on the windshield, sauntered back, pulled out her gun, just kidding, nodded and smiled and told us to have a nice day.
We don’t think she was serious but maybe she was. We will never know.
We were heading to Liwonde National Park and after about six hours of so-so roads we made it to Mvuu Camp.
What is “belt and road”?
The Chinese influence in Malawi.