You know how sometimes people will say something is gutt-wrenching? Well our last day in Malawi was what I would call a butt-wrenching 24hrs. (Obviously this comes before Zanzibar in terms of timeframe)
We wanted to see the Nyika National Park, which is in the north-west of Malawi bordering Zambia. The drive up there on Wednesday afternoon included 120km of VERY VERY rough bumpy dirt roads, which took about 3 hours. Man was I glad to get out of the car after that! The campsite is at quite a high altitude – about 2500m – and as a result it was a cold night for camping. We were all wearing long-johns and hats and gloves. Reminded me of Canada, which was nice. This was our campsite view.
Then the next day we rented mountain bikes and went for a three-hour ride in the park. The first part was through a forest and was mostly uphill. We all had to push our bikes through some of that. Then we came out on the plateau. It felt lie you could see forever, except it was hard to enjoy the view unless we were stopped, because the road itself needed a lot of attention. My mum found that very frustrating because she likes to always be looking for animals. A couple of times she nearly rode into the thorny bushes.
Cracked, hard-packed, rutted mud is bumpy enough in a car with a good suspension. On a mountain-bike? Ouch!! Very jarring on the hands and arms and backside. And my legs got tired from all the hills. I wiped out a couple of times in sandy bits or gravel, but nothing too bad.
We passed really close to roan antelope and to zebra – within 100m. That was cool. But the most amazing part was when I surprised an owl that was in a tree close to the road around a corner. When he flew away his wing-tips actually smacked my face.
Cracked, hard-packed, rutted mud is bumpy enough in a car with a good suspension. On a mountain-bike? Ouch!! Very jarring on the hands and arms and backside. And my legs got tired from all the hills. I wiped out a couple of times in sandy bits or gravel, but nothing too bad.
We passed really close to roan antelope and to zebra – within 100m. That was cool. But the most amazing part was when I surprised an owl that was in a tree close to the road around a corner. When he flew away his wing-tips actually smacked my face.
After three hours of bumpy riding on a hard bike seat we had some lunch and packed up the car for three more hours of bumpy riding (at least this part sitting on softer, padded car upholstery). By the time we made it down the mountain and back to the north end of Lake Malawi we were a bit numb.