Day 42: Swam in the Williams Falls, saw the Queen's view and ate nsima

17th August:

I woke up with over 40 mosquito bites on my feet..... Forty!

I had the highly recommended French toast for breaky, aka eggy bread- and it lived up to expectations! Mmmm...

The two Austrian girls and I headed off with Melvin (the taxi driver who took us to Casa Rosa last night) up to Zomba Plateau. Up here we got a guide called TG (which stands for Thank God...!) During the hike we saw blue monkeys, vervet monkeys and baboons.

Pine trees everywhere, because there's a lot of deforestation and they grow quickly.

Spending 6 hours hiking together I got to know the girls a bit better and visa versa. It turns out they're both 19 as well, but I thought they were 21 and they thought I was 21 too! They have both take a gap year, Nadia volunteered near here in Salima around January and has come back for a few weeks during the summer bringing her best friend from school, Rosa. Nadia is going to study Architecture and Rosa is going to study Landscape architecture.

The plateau is such a beautiful green place, everywhere covered in moss. It even smelt like a rainforest!

We found a vine which looked like a very tempting rope swing and asked TG if it was safe to go on. He said he wanted to try it first before he let us go on it and it clearly wasn't a safe one because he ended up half in the river! He was not happy.... Haha!

After a couple hours of walked we reached the Williams Falls, which I was very excited for seeing as it's my surname. We washed our hands and feet in the water and found it to be absolutely freezing, similar temperature to the lake near the top of Snowdon! But of course we'd brought our bikinis and didn't want to waste his opportunity, so in we went. Definitely takes your breath away (literally) as you first stand under the waterfall, and after a while I had to get out because my legs were numb, but so worth it to be able to say I swam in the Williams Falls!

 "ok yeah that's enough, I can't feel my legs"

After we dried off we walked onwards to the Emperors View and Queens View and then back down the plateau, past the trout fish farm and the big dam. 

 
 A very lake where locals strongly believe spirits live. A boy died there a few years ago, apparently saying he was shouting to his friends on the banks that something was dragging him down. Believe what you will, but TG knew the boy and showed us his grave nearby.

  Loads of deforestation
   
Save the best til last...

Rosa and Nadia were saying they wanted to do Mulanje this weekend and I said I did too, so now I'm staying a couple more days in Zomba with them and then we're all gonna climb it together!

When we got back down to town we were starving, having not eaten anything since breakfast at 8am. We went to a little place in the market where the girls had dinner yesterday and had the only meal on the menu:

Nsima, beans and vegetables (one of the veg was called rape...!?)
 We ordered two nsima and one rice to share between us 3.

This wasn't the first time I'd had nsima, I just haven't mentioned it in my blog until now. It is the Malawian staple dish made from a sort of corn flour from the casava plant. It looks like grainy mashed potato, with the texture of semolina and the consistency of cookie dough. It tastes like nothing I can describe.

Before heading home I haggled for some strawberries - they have berries in Zomba!!!!

We also stopped past the bakery on the way back...