Alright. Today was an adventure. I like being independent and having adventures, and I think this day filled my quota for awhile! T and I were told Dedza Pottery and Lake Malawi were both must sees in Malawi, yet we were told we would not have enough time for both. Well, we sure proved everyone wrong!
We started the morning bright and early by watching the sunrise over the lake. It was gorgeous. And it was funny to watch people coming out to fish or bathe in the water as we watched the sunrise. It’s just another day for them! We headed back to bed for a few hours, but in hindsight we should have gotten up and started going for the day already!
We left Cool Runnings (good thing—our bathroom was full of ants) for our adventure to the southwest around 9:30 am. Little did we know that it would take ALL DAY to get to our next destination, a mere 180 km away! Walking to the main road and hitching a ride on a matola took awhile. The matola was packed—at least 25 adults. Standing room only! When I did get a seat later on in the trip, my center of gravity was outside the vehicle and I felt like I was falling the entire way. That and I couldn’t feel my left leg at all and had no idea how I would be able to successfully walk once we got to Salima. It worked out somehow though and we arrived safely in Salima to catch a minibus to Golomoti, a little over 100km to the south. Well, that was no problem. It didn’t take long for the bus to fill up and leave, so that was nice for a change. We rode to Golomoti with a bunch of Belgians, and it was funny because when we came up to the minibus, the guy who herds you in said come on this one, all your friends are here! Yes, because we’re Mzungus, we’re all friends. Of course. J But it was neat to hear about the program that the Belgians were doing in Malawi because they were teachers, too. They were headed to Monkey Bay after Golomoti and we were heading to Dedza, so we parted ways. Now comes the interesting part. Golomoti is a village only a tiny bit bigger than other villages, but there were two matolas there, one for Dedza and one for Monkey Bay. The Dedza one leaves whenever it’s full and we happened to be in luck and only wait about 20 minutes to leave! This matola was a bigger truck, and we even got seats! This turned out not to be a good thing, though, because the plank we were sitting on wasn’t attached to the vehicle and the 50km to Dedza was completely through the mountains! I was again sitting on the edge and there were a few times I wasn’t sure I’d be in the matola after the next curve! I white knuckled it the entire way there! But just another experience for T and I. J Ok, so we got to Dedza successfully right before 2 and since it gets dark shortly after 6, we wanted to be home by then, but Lilongwe is 100km north of Dedza, meaning we’d have no time in Dedza at all after that ordeal. So that idea was shot.
We hopped out of the matola and continued on foot in search of an ATM (Senga Bay doesn’t have any and we were out of Malawian kwacha!). That part wasn’t too painful, but then we had to find Dedza Pottery, which of course isn’t in town. In the travel book we had, we saw a path that looked like a short cut to the pottery, a 3km walk instead of a 5km walk! So we started along a random dirt path hoping it was the correct random dirt path. We asked a few locals, but not as many know English as in Zambia, so we got mixed results. After walking for 10 minutes, a man came up to us, told us we were going the wrong way, and told us to follow him. Yay, another guide! Well, Dedza is a mountain, and this guy was booking it through the mountain. Did I mention we had all our bags and I was wearing sandals? Yeah, so we ended up power walking/hiking through the mountains following a stranger for a half hour, but we made it! T and I were both prayng that this was a nice stranger since we were foreigners getting lead through a mountain; it could have ended badly….but it didn’t! Finally! By 3 pm we were SOOOO excited to sit in a nice restaurant and get some food! It was quite the adventure!
We got some yummy food at the pottery lodge (and more importantly beverages because we were both dehydrated by this point!) and hit the pottery. It’s a smallish place, but all their things are hand carved and painted. Beautiful work. Some of my readers may become owners of some of this pottery, which is quite special, considering the adventure it took to get there! We left the pottery shop with slightly heavier bags and stopped in a few more artsy shops before heading back to the main road (not through the mountain this time!) We found a minibus back to Lilongwe pretty easily and we were on our way before dark.
Well, we got back to Lilongwe around 7 and it’s dark then. And of course the bus was headed for the huge crazy bus stop downtown which isn’t safe for visitors after dark. So no one could pick us up, again, and again, we needed to hail a taxi. By this time I had gotten the exchange rate down, so I made sure we got a good rate; we hopped from taxi to taxi even to barter for the best price! Lilongwe is broken up into different “areas” and the nurses, K and M, live in Area 10, on the other side of town, and our taxi driver didn’t really know where, and we didn’t really know either. So he ended up dropping us off on the side of a road near our destination and thanks to the powers of cell phones, we got the final directions and made our way “home.” Many modes of transportation and about $13 later, T and I successfully left Senga Bay, went through Salima and Golomoti to Dedza and back to Lilongwe by making a square without planning any of it. K and M greatly enjoyed our story about our adventure and couldn’t believe we did all the crazy things we did. But it was fun. J They made us grilled cheese and yummy eggplant soup and we chatted a bit before watching Dirty Dancing Havana Nights (Oh Javier!) and hitting the hay.
No comments:
Post a Comment