Day 39: Exciting (stressful!) journey to Liwonde Safari Camp

14th August:

After having another relaxed morning I left around 1pm and got a lift with some of the American World Health Core girls in their car. They dropped me off at the junction where the dirt road from Cape Maclear meets the main road, and they headed back to Lilongwe while I waited by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere for about half an hour before I flagged down a minibus going to Mangochi.

The turnover from my Mangochi minibus to another minibus going to Liwonde was super speedy- I'd already been told which one to get in before I'd even got out of the first one!

However this was too good to be true... We waited for nearly an hour before we actually left, and there was a group of angry guys hanging around and one of them kept banging on the side of the minibus.

We eventually left around 3:30 and I realised that I was never going to make it to Liwonde Safari Camp before 4pm (the deadline for getting a free lift from Liwonde Town).

At one point during the 2 hour journey I felt something fluffy or feathery by my foot, but couldn't check cause I had bags on top of me and it was all a bit squished (as usual). Then when we made a stop and someone got out, they reached under the seat and pulled out a live chicken! Sadly it's feet were tied together and they were holding it by its wings, it was clearly incredibly distressed but didn't have the energy to express it. For those of you who don't know, I have pet chickens, so seeing one being treated so horrendously was not a happy moment.

I finally got to Liwonde, and the sun had already set. Uh oh!

Again I had a few taxi drivers fighting over me, and when I asked how much one of them said 5,000 - over a fiver! Completely overpriced for a 2km journey considering I payed just over a fifth of that getting from Mangochi, over two hours away!
I decided to get a bicycle taxi instead, thinking it was going to be like a bicycle version of a tuk tuk.... Nope! So I was sitting on the back of a bicycle with my massive backpack on my back, my smaller one on my front, being cycled through the bush in moonlight. I was very impressed with the pace he kept up, considering he had me- a fifty something kilo person, plus my backpack which must be over 15kgs, all sitting on the back wheel of this rusty old bike! I told him many many times that I was going to Liwonde Safari Camp and each time he nodded and mumbled something. 

About 30 minutes later I thought it was a bit odd that we were still going, I didn't think it was this far away. We then arrived at the gates of another lodge called Bushman's Baobabs and I realised he'd taken me to the wrong place. I tried to explain to him that I wasn't staying here, only to discover that he didn't speak a single word of English!! I tried to show him on the map where I wanted to go but he just nodded and looked at me blankly. I tried calling both Liwonde Safari Camp and Bushman's Baobabs (cause there was no one in site and the gates of their drive were locked) but there was no signal and my phone kept cutting out. Understandably I was getting rather stressed, stuck in the middle of absolutely nowhere in the African bush with no phone signal and a guy on a bicycle who only spoke Chichewa who didn't know where my lodge was, or that it even existed.

He then ran off and left me stranded by myself, and didn't even gesture goodbye or say where he was going. About 10 minutes later (but it felt like hours) he came back with two local guys who also only spoke Chichewa and I showed them the map I had of the national park. I don't think they'd ever seen a map before cause they also nodded and looked at me blankly, clearly pretending to know what I was saying, when I was actually asking them if they knew where Liwonde Safari camp was. It was impossible. In the end one of them grabbed my rucksack and started walking off, I ran after him trying to get it back and he said something in Chichewa and pointed into the distance. For some reason I trusted him and followed him, simply cause I didn't have any other options.

A few minutes into walking, I stopped them and asked "10 minutes? 1hour? How long?" And I hoped this would work because they use English numbers and I think they use the words "minutes" and "hours" as well. But this was not successful, so instead I tried "100 metres, 2 kilometres?"  Again they just nodded and kept walking on. I stubbornly stopped them the last time and refused to walk until I got a word out of one of them, and finally he said "3"- I thought hours, he said no, I said minutes, he said yes! Thank god for that!   ... 20 minutes later we arrived at Liwonde Safari Camp in complete pitch black with my torch to look for directions to the reception. It was very very well hidden, with no light pollution and it was very quiet. I payed the bicycle taxi man and then tipped the two guys who helped us find it about 10p each. I got settled into the camp, had some dinner and had a drink at the bar meeting other travellers before going to bed.  I'll sleep well tonight!