Glamorous Only in Retrospect: 28 February

28 February

Ngala – Kande Beach

41 Miles

Erik:

We had a lovely evening last night but didn't sleep well. It got cold and my leg kept insisting on cramping. By 8:45 we were packed and had finished our breakfast.

It felt a little cooler than yesterday. About 20 miles into the ride we ran into two other cyclists. Jan from the Netherlands and Janis from Latvia. They have both been at it for 8/9 months or so. Jan did Netherlands-East Africa and down while Janis came down the West side. Janis was really cool. He had handmade perniers and a rad beard. He said he got arrested and strip searched in Uganda because the villagers said he looked like a terrorist. Really funny story and super chill dude. We all chatted for about an hour and then rode on. They were shooting for Nhkotakota which is quite a ways away, especially this late in the day.

We went to a secluded beach for some lunch, the water is really clear here. For a lake.

At like 3pm we got to Kande. At the open market I bought 2 tangerines, 5 guavas, 500g rice, 6 tomatoes, 5 avocados and 2 "ice drink" thingies for 750MK. That's about $2USD. The ice drinks are flavored water that they freeze and put in a little plastic bag. Delicious.

Kande Beach Camp is super nice, but very tourist ridden. Those big overland tour buses are here. The ones we've seen on the road so much. It's super cheap to camp and the beach rocks, so we'll hang out here for a couple of days.

We played fussball with a west scot who lives in Peru and a nice Malawian. Really good night.

Steph:

I got up early to watch the sunrise and it was beautiful. There was a group of fishermen launching their boats and one of them walked over to me. His name was Leuben and he's only 14 years old. We ended up talking for almost 45 minutes. He just kept asking questions about everything from what kind of music I like to what I do for "entertainment", to why I am in Africa and what I think of Malawi. Malawians seem very proud to be Malawian. This kid was so sweet. He kept telling me that he was proud of me being in Malawi and that he was proud. Proud Proud Proud. It was really nice talking to him.

Ooh fun story: We were riding along this mountain, close to the beach and wondering whether the plants growing on the side of the road were Mary-jay-juana or not when we stopped to switch out our water bottles. A very old, little wrinkly man came walking up the road towards us and I greeted him in my now perfected Chichewa greeting. He smiled and started saying a lot of words that we did not understand. He realized this and invited us, in very broken english, to go back to his house to smoke with him. It was amazing. I wanted to go really badly but we declined politely and he smiled and said, "no problem, no problem". I guess that answered our pot question, since I'm pretty sure he was already pretty stoned.

It was a good day. I kicked Erik's butt in Fussball and then a Malawian named James kicked mine. Good stuff.