Great Travel Experiences: Morning at Machu Picchu

There are two different ways to get to Machu Picchu . The easy way is to take the train to Aguas Calientes and then take a bus up to the ruins. It's a great way to do it, sitting on at rain through some stunning scenery, arriving at the small town, getting a beer and chilli while you wait for the bus, riding up the hill to the most famous ruins in the world.
It's a great way to do it but it isn't the best way. I've visited the site twice, once by rail and once by hiking the Inca Trail and without doubt the Inca Trail is the best way to see it.
Actually, from the Inca Trail the first sight of the lost city is a major disappointment. The hazy light renders the tree covered mountainside into a dull greenish grey against which the walls of the city are a dull brownish grey with no visual impact at all. Worse though is the vicious white zig-zag scar of the road which has been carved through the trees to carry busloads of tourists from the valley to the city. This is such a high visibility feature of the landscape that Machu Pichu would be insignificant by comparison if it were painted day-glo pink. To add insult to this monstrous injury the road has been crowned with a bus station and hotel with no attempt at all to blend them into the background.
That's only first impressions though and as soon as you dip down onto the trail that leads from the Sun Gate into the ruins you lose sight of both the road and the bus station and the closer you get, the better it gets.
We had arrived early, before the first trainload of daytripping tourists and so it was eerily empty. At a point that was still outside the city walls we paused on a grassy plateau looking down at the remains of the buildings. Our guide, Raoul, gave us a potted history and we listened attentively to his words.
As we sat listening to him a bank of cloud rolled in from the left gradually but inexorably eating away the view until we were looking at a white wall. He paused in his descriptions and silence fell. Then, just as gradually it dispersed, this time like a morning mist, first thinning and then vanishing, slowly revealing the city again. As it thinned, changing from a thick shroud of cotton whiteness to a vanishing series of lacy threads it was easy to imagine the city as it must have once been, populated and thriving. I could almost see the sunlight glistening on the gold hanging on the walls, almost hear the noise of the people going about their daily tasks, almost smell the llamas. As the last wisps vanished I realised that I could smell the llamas, a silent herd of them stood just one terrace down.We deceded the steps and entered the city.

Great Travel Experiences: Doing Nothing in Yangshou

So, I have a job offer in China, not just in China though but in my favourite area of China. It seems that now might be an appropriate time to mention the joys of doing nothing.

* * *

We had been on the road for a long time when we reached Yangshou. Days of tedious driving interspersed with unremarkable stopovers had left us a little tired and dispirited.

We reached Yangshou at four thirty and checked in at the hotel. I had been intending to take just one night and then seek cheaper accommodation but two things changed my mind. The first was the weight of my rucksack. As we were changing trucks in a couple of days everything needed to be in it and I could barely lift it. The thought of carrying it around while I searched for a new hotel was horrible. The second was the ‘dorm’. I had thought that for dormitory rooms the price of forty yuan was a little high and so it would have been. However the "dormitory" turned out not to be exactly what I was expecting. Instead I found myself in a Spartan but adequate, large, high-ceilinged room, approximately a cube with a twenty foot side. with its own shower and toilet and, moreover, the sole occupant of it. In fact, as a little exploration verified,I was the sole occupant of the whole building. It was great.

Next morning I rose early and took my breakfast in one of the cafes. A quick count gave the impression that if I stayed a month I could eat three meals a day without twice visiting the same establishment. Yangshou, was as I said, a backpacker town, one of those places that seems to have no existence independent of the travellers on its streets. It’s a small place with two main streets joined by a series of parallel alleys and the buildings are a fifty-fifty mix of tourist shops and bars. They all have either jokey names - Minnie Mao’s, The No-Name Cafe or mock classical ones - The Golden Lotus, The Shining Mountain. One famous one was the Mei You Cafe - Mei You is a phrase you hear a lot in China - it means ‘we don’t have it’. You could buy T-shirts with the slogan ‘Hold the Mei-You’ , a pun that must surely have been incomprehensible to the people selling them.

The stalls, except for a few at the far end of the main street sold statues and paintings, T-shirts and carvings, lanterns and jewellery and of course CDs. Every fifth one seemed to be selling the now familiar stock of pirated CDs.

Those few shops at the far end were more interesting though. They were the Chinese equivalent of junk shops. They sold everything - old coins, broken toys, ‘antique’ jewellery, clocks, Chairman Mao watches, ivory carvings, old books, statues of everything under the sun. Whatever you wanted was probably in there somewhere. Finding it though... that could be another matter.

The restaurants and cafes all spilled out onto the street and everyone would stop to chat with no effort to persuade you to buy or to come in. It was superbly relaxed and friendly. I walked around for a couple of hour, stopping now and then for a lemonade - the day was very hot - and a chat. Most people had limited English but what they lacked in vocabulary they made up for in enthusiasm.  

On the whole it was one of those wonderful, relaxing but essentially event-less days. The more I saw of the place the more I liked it.

The following morning was pretty much a retread, substitute different bars, restaurants and company but otherwise similar. The afternoon was different though.  I had decided to join a group taking a boat trip along the river. It’s a remarkable place, every bit as lovely as I remembered it. With the sun high in the sky the water is calm enough to be a mirror reflecting back the slightly wavering images of the conical mountains that rise from the plain like giant molehills. Here and there, there were groups of children playing in the water and the sometimes a long low boat with a fisherman. We sailed downstream, watching the birds wheeling overhead and the water buffalo cooling off in the shallows. When the sun started dip towards the mountain tops we turned around and sailed back, the new light changing the appearance of everything, filling the sky with flaming hues. I sat at the front of the boat doing nothing but just watching it all. I could have spent hours more there.

It was clear that any day spent in Yangshou was likely to be uneventful and relaxing  and so it proved once again on our last day there. It was nevertheless an enjoyable one. Yesterday I had bought a Tang Dynasty T-shirt (so much I had grown to like the band) and it proved a nice conversation piece with the locals.  First, as I sat finishing off my second cup of coffee after breakfast in yet another of the restaurants the very bored looking waitress remarked

            “Ah, Tang Zhou - famous Chinese Rock band !”

A pleasant if inconsequential fifteen minutes of chat about western rock music ensued until the arrival of some customers ended the conversation by dragging her back to work.

Later, in similar circumstances as I was having a beer after my chilli dog and chips lunch at the 7th Heaven Cafe another local girl approached, drawn by the T-shirt and introduced herself as Angela. We sat talking for well over an hour. Angela - that’s her English name of course, she had a real Chinese one as well - was visiting friends. She was from  Zhaoqing in the Guangdong Province. It’s supposed to be a nice place in itself but she said she preferred Yangshou. She was on holiday but her friends were at work. She was at a loose end and wanted to practice her English. She was also perfectly charming. Our chat was wide ranging if shallow covering the topics of English and Chinese language difficulties, my impressions of China, her desire to travel and the difficulties that presents. We also covered BSE and CJD (which had actually made the Chinese news broadcasts !), British, Chinese and European agriculture and the House of Frasier (she worked for one of their suppliers) .

Scarcely had that encounter ended than I wandered into another bar (just for a lemonade this time) and found myself in another long conversation with the waitress and then again as I ate my evening meal at eight O’clock and again shortly afterwards as I became involved in a conversation with an English woman and a large effusive Israeli in a T-shirt almost as loud as his stentorian voice.

When I finally went off to the hotel at about eleven thirty I reflected that it had been an excellent day and an excellent stay in Yangshou. Today had been the most sustained conversation I had had for months with anyone outside the group. Tomorrow though we would be leaving and heading for the South Coast ready for Hong Kong and the end of this leg. A few days of essentially doing nothing had been a very pleasant interlude.

* * *

And that's the area where the school that I have been offered work at is located. Until I went over my notes from the period to write this entry, I had forgotten how much I like it. 

Get out your money!

Both of my books are now available.

You can buy The Hitting The Road Again Blues here.

You can buy Anyone Can Do It here.

Or if you have any problems you can go to www.lulu.com, click "BUY" and search for the title.

Prices are £7 for The Hitting The Road Again Blues and £8 for Anyone Can Do It. Lulu do charge postage and packing on top of that.

Also Coming Soon

And, for the literally two (though a different two) who have been clamouring for this...

This description of my travels in North and South America was actually written in 2001 but is only now, finally, about to see print.

I reckon about a fortnight.

Keep on watching this space.

Great Travel Experiences: The Midnight Sun

We were in Scandinavia. Of course when I say "we", what I mean is an assorted group of people who didn't, at least to begin with, know each other, on a package trip that took in parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland. 

A group of us rapidly became friends, mainly by virtue of being prepared to share whatever alcohol we had brought with us because the Scandinavian prices were rather higher than we wanted to pay. Scandinavia had its problematic aspects for the traveller. Sky high prices for booze is one of them. The mosquito problem is another. Any bit of exposed flesh rapidly becomes a pulsating mass of itching red lumps that merge into throbbing relief maps of agony.

So far, I imagine that you are wondering exactly why this is a "Great" travel experience as opposed to, say, a really rubbish one. The simple answer is the stark, bleak  beauty of the landscape and the sheer pleasure in sitting watching what appears to be a sunset suddenly turn miraculously into a sunrise as the lowest edge of the midnight sun skims the distant horizon and then begins to climb again as if it has dipped a toe into the freezing arctic water and changed its mind about going swimming.

We did have a trip up to Nordkapp to see it but the truth is that Norkapp isn't a terribly interesting place. It has a viewpoint and it has a gift shop and it has a crowd of tourists almost as big as Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon during the sales but it's not the best place to see it. Choose instead somewhere else, pretty much anywhere out of town and near a lake or the sea will do. Then put up a few folding chairs, dig out a bottle of whisky that you had the foresight to take with you and sit and enjoy the novelty of watching the sun change direction before your very eyes.

It more than makes up for all the other problems - beer prices and mosquitoes included.

Great Travel Experiences: Under the stars in the White Desert

Sleeping out under the stars in the White Desert, Egypt

An extract from my diary for 16th/17th May, 2001.

An accurate, though minimalist, summary of the day would be - long drive, camped in the white desert.
Accurate it might be but it wouldn't begin to describe it adequately. The desert is so bleak and barren for such long stretches that it becomes hypnotic. The highway and a parallel railway line run arrow straight across it trisecting it like scalpel cuts. We lunched at an inexplicable concrete shelter which was as far as we could determine a bus stop. Exactly why there was a bus stop in such a palpably empty place where there could be no conceivable reason for anyone to be waiting any more than for anyone to be getting off, was a mystery destined to remain unsolved.
We were still in the desert when we pulled off the road and drove behind one of the very few rocky outcroppings to park and camp.
The White Desert is of course a desert. And it's white. It's also randomly scattered with thousands, probably millions, of the oddest pieces of rock I have ever seen. They almost all have a shiny black surface and an interior that looks like it is machined coaxial cable. Some look like two inch lengths of metal rod, others form branching geometric shapes, yet others lie in perfectly formed spirals. I have no idea what bizarre geological processes have resulted in these rocks but they are all different and endlessly fascinating in their diversity.
After dinner I climbed to the top of the outcrop and sat watching the sky again until it became so dark that I feared that if I remained longer descending might become lethally dangerous. 

When I slept it was not in a tent but half a mile from the camp out in the desert on just my sleep mat where I lay even longer watching the stars. The flaming white spark of a shooting star crossed the sky and I made a wish and went to sleep.

I dreamed of the dead rising up from the desert and silently standing in their thousands in perfect rows and ranks, a shadow army who filled the world from horizon to horizon. Slowly they turned and walked away. I rose and followed them but they were marching to a drum I could not hear and as they receded from me they faded into mist.
I woke and looked at the desert, ghostly in the moonlight, a distant faint glow of cities somewhere beyond the horizon.
I slept again and dreamed of aliens descending from the sky and offering me a franchise to sell toys in their likenesses around the world.

I woke again and the sun was rising, painting the white desert in golden shades. I watched as it climbed from the horizon, spreading like a syrup stain along the rim of the world until it unglued itself and sailed into the sky.
I sat watching in quiet fascination, unaware of anything other than this gorgeous stark sunrise, unaware of the others from the group who had, as I had done, instinctively spread themselves far and wide through the desert, to feel alone in this emptiness.

As the sun rose I wrote this poem.

In The White Desert

Awake on the bone ground
In shattered geometries of stone
Alone, surrendered to the night,
In the White Desert
Starfish stranded, darkness bound
The centre of the silent dome
Of scattered, ancient frozen lights
In the White Desert

A falling star, a spark
Ignites the breaking fire
Pours flame over the circling heights
Into the White Desert
Drives wedges through the dark
Until it's clutching hand expires
And reveals again the sight
Of the White Desert.

Christmas in the Philippines, 1995

The piece I performed last night at City Voices.

According to the official survey, the Philippines consists of 7107 Islands. Of these roughly 2000 are inhabited although only about 500 are larger than, for the sake of example, Wolverhampton Town Centre. The largest of the islands is Luzon where the capitol city, Manila, is located.
    It is a city of startling contrasts. At one end of Manila's social spectrum there are millionaires who live in palatial mansions while at the other there is the Tondo - a grim slum of a shanty town which runs for mile after hideous mile parallel to the South Superhighway and the railroad tracks, and houses one and a half million people in poverty and filth.
   
    We arrived about a week before Christmas and everywhere saw signs of civic festivity - enormous illuminated stars hanging above the street, multicoloured four-foot wide, flashing snowflakes like the displays on demented slot machines, giant snowmen painted on buildings in a country that has never even seen snow, Santa Clauses and Reindeer by the sleighful.

    The next morning we took a public bus for Batangas, a port in the South of Luzon several hours away along the South Super Highway. The journey took us first past the Tondo. It was a horrible sight that the descriptions in the guide book hadn't prepared me for. The most horrible aspect of this 'city' was the mundanity of the life within it. People in this terrible place went about the normal business of living as if it were any other suburb. Dirty and torn washing fluttered from lines strung between the buildings. People crouched out of doors cooking in pots over fires that burned with a greasy green flame and left oily smoke like a smear in the air. At the back of the huts, rubbish was piled high. At one point there was a break where the road passed over a wide drainage culvert which was perhaps twenty feet deep. It was half filled with the ghastly detritus of slum living. Children were playing in the filth.
    Here and there, though, there were small triumphs of humanity as some of the inhabitants had hung up home-made Christmas decorations that turned gaily in the wind.
The bus route wound on through an endless sequence of almost identical towns, the sort of places that look as if they were made from the debris when all of the real places had been finished. Buildings were jerry-built of wood, concrete and odd pieces of corrugated metal. Business in the towns seemed to consist mainly of Doctors, Dentists and Clinics mixed in with Auto Repair Shops with yards full of rusty gas cylinders. Eventually we reached Batangas.    
    Batangas is point of departure for the ferry to Puerto Galera on Mindoro. To my eye it had the look of having been thrown together hastily about ten minutes ago and of being likely to fall down again in ten minutes time. As the bus made its painfully slow way through the traffic to the harbour there was plenty of time to see it in all its glory. It seemed strange that many of the buildings had painted signs outside advertising courses in Word, Windows, PowerPoint and a host of other familiar computer products.
    At the harbour we boarded the ferry to Puerto Galera. It was a short journey and we were soon approaching our destination through the beautiful Batangas Channel. The harbour itself is filled with bangkas, unseaworthy looking boats resembling canoes stabilised by long bamboo crosspieces ending in struts - parallel - to the hull which lie at the waterline.
    The other ubiquitous form of transport in the islands is the Jeepney, a kind of stretched jeep which looks about as roadworthy as the bangkas look seaworthy. They are garishly painted and usually have religious quotations such as "Have Mercy On Us Miserable Sinners" featured somewhere prominently on them, to further terrify their already frightened passengers. We took one of these vehicles to Encenada Beach, the resort where we were to spend a couple of days before moving on. Inside our uncomfortable ride the roof was decorated with glued on Toblerone packets and empty yoghurt cartons. We bounced up and down the hills hanging on to our seats with dogged determination.
    Encenada was a nice enough place but I'm not really a beach person so I was glad when the time came to move on. We were going to spend a couple of days trekking into and out of the jungle interior of Mindoro. We met our guides, who all looked tiny next to us, on a long curving beach between the ocean and the jungle and started off along an easy broad path that ran into the forest roughly paralleling a river.
Initially it was a pleasant stroll with the forest only sporadically thickening and with many large open areas of rice-paddies. Very occasionally the path became a little narrower and steeper and slick with mud. At about lunchtime we crossed a wide and fast-flowing, though fairly shallow river and paused for a rest break. Through the afternoon there were several more river crossings at faster and deeper fords each time. Eventually, in a clearing we came to a broken down bamboo and palm structure which we were told would be our 'hotel' for the night.
    Some of the guides were already hard at work restoring the shelter. First they rammed four long bamboo corner pieces into the ground, jack-hammering them in with bare hands until they were wedged fast. To these, about ten inches from the ground, they attached four more pieces to form the edges of the floor. Further poles were laid across these forming the floor itself. A similar arrangement but with layers of palm leaves formed the roof. The whole thing was lashed together with tough and fibrous strips of bark, stretched and twisted into a kind of twine. I tried to break a piece and found that it was strong enough to resist my best efforts.
    In one corner of the camp was table and benches also lashed together from pieces of bamboo. This was our dining room. The meal that we ate there was goat stew and chicken soup, both animals having been dispatched with a chainsaw delicacy that failed to distinguish the bone from the meat.
It was already dark and the rain was lashing in at the sides of our makeshift restaurant. After dinner we chose our spots in the shelters, unrolled our sleeping bags and tried to sleep. I found myself dozing in short bursts. The rain kept on getting faster and harder and more and more of it found its way through the roof until all of us were drenched. I lay in an increasingly sodden bag trying not to think about the fact that, allowing for the time difference, my work's Christmas party was now in full swing.   
    About two hours before dawn I had had enough. My sleeping bag was reduced to little more than a soaking sponge and I decide that I would be better sitting in waterproofs in the remains of the dining room.
    When, shortly after the rain had finally stopped, dawn eventually came, creeping in slowly like thick honey spreading on a plate, we ate a breakfast of banana and coconut boiled in coconut milk and served with plates of fried aubergine and then set about retracing yesterday's route to the coast.

It was a couple of days later, the day before Christmas Eve, when we set off in Jeepneys for the point where we would begin main hike of the trip. The track, muddy and deeply rutted, wound up the side of a hill that was not quite big enough to count as a mountain. Days of heavy rain had reduced the traction to nil although our completely bald tyres could probably have accomplished that unaided. In places the road had eroded to the point where the driving surface was narrower than the jeepney's wheelbase leaving parts of the tyre right up against the edge. Once we were mired so deeply in the mud that we had to get out and push. All our efforts accomplished nothing more than getting us dirty. Eventually, after a dozen or more near suicidal runs at it the driver managed to bounce the jeepney round the edge of the worst of it and we could climb back in and continue.
    We left the jeepney to continue on foot at a concrete hut on the hillside that looked for all the world like a bus shelter although no bus could ever have ascended such a road.  Descending a path we joined the edge of a series of rice paddies which eventually became a muddy jungle track that wound up and down, sometimes quite steeply, through closely packed trees. We passed through several villages of thatched huts, to the total indifference of the indigenous population, before arriving at Batad, our overnight stop. Batad was the reason for the trip. Here the mountains rise around the village in the form of a huge natural amphitheatre and are completely covered in the stepped contours of hundreds of rice paddies which are one of the many wonders alluded to as the 'Eighth Wonder of the World".
The village was a couple of dozen buildings spread across both sides of the valley, supplemented by a few more substantial wooden ones, some of which were providing our accommodation - Spartan but comfortable enough.
    I was the first to rise next morning, shortly before dawn, having spent a restless night. I sat alone out on the empty balcony watching dawn through the still heavy rain. It was a peaceful and reflective hour and by the time other people had started to move about I felt calm and content. As everyone emerged from their beds and looked unhappily at the weather, I found myself in a ridiculously cheerful and hearty mood which seemed set to last all day. We ate a simple breakfast and set out.

    The day's walking was tricky. In dry conditions it would have been simple and straightforward but the conditions weren't dry. We climbed up the steep terracing by walking along the stone walls that edged the paddies. The pattern was constant. On one side of us was a six inch drop into a foot of cold and muddy water. On the other was a drop of twenty to thirty feet into similarly cold and muddy water. In between was our path, the top of what amounted to a wall about six inches wide and made slick and dangerous by the rain.
    Finally, after an especially tricky section, we reached Cambulo which is a sizeable town with a large school, its own clinic, several churches, several 'guest houses' and a village square. At the school a spirited, if damp, volleyball game was going on watched by half the village. The town square was an open area surrounded by bamboo benches in a kind of parody of an English Country Village. In this weather there was no-one sitting there. After half an hour of poking around I went back to our 'hotel', dug out some slightly drier clothing and went down for a drink.
    Our accommodation was split between two village houses. The 'dining room', such as it was, was in ours. It was a cramped space - not quite big enough for all of us - necessitating a rapid deepening of friendships as we struggled to fit onto the benches. I squeezed onto a narrow bench near the door with one of the other members of our party, Allison who I had been getting increasingly close to during the trip so far.
    Before dinner had arrived a group of school children did. They stood outside performing a medley of Christmas Carols, endlessly and effortlessly running one into another until our resolve cracked and we paid up. Later I examined one of their school book 'song sheets'. Everything was written down exactly as they had performed it, a single continuous blending of Mary's Boy Child, Good King Wenceslas, We Wish You A Merry Christmas, Silent Night and so on including, bizarrely, Christmas Time In Cambulo.
    During Dinner a second group rehearsed outside but were hampered partly by their inability to agree on a selection and partly by our host who kept chasing them away. Credit to them for perseverance though. They moved further away and stood under a shelter and sang at us from a distance. The guide was trying to give us a talk about local customs but his voice was so quiet that it was too hard to follow him. After about fifteen minutes Allison and I gave up the effort went out and gave some encouragement - and some money - to this second group of singers. We sheltered under the eaves of one of the thatched huts while they sang to us. It was dark and wet and rather cold but standing there together listening to them it seemed like a marvelous enough Christmas Eve to me.

Disgusting, now I come to think of it

QI tonight, in a series devoted to the letter H, focussed on all things horrible. One of the things included was the Sourtoe Cocktail. It reminded me that I have actually drunk one. Here is the relevant bit from my other blog.

... rather than end up completely broke in the Casino a few of us strolled down Queen Street to the Downtown Hotel in search of another of those quaint ten minute old traditions - the ‘Sourtoe’ cocktail. Now without being unduly cynical an easier quicker scam for making money was never dreamed up by anyone. The ‘legend’ has it that a group of riverboat captains played a joke on another who was something of a braggart by convincing him that it was traditional to drink down a shot of spirits containing the pickled remains of a human toe lost by a prospector due to frostbite. In the Downtown Hotel not only do they pull the same stunt on dozens of tourists every night they charge them for the privilege AND make them buy their own shot. Strange how knowing you are being conned doesn’t stop you though. At least half of our group, me included, swelled their coffers and from the queue behind us they were clearly going to have a profitable night’s toe sucking.
There must have been something wrong with either the tequila or the toe though because by the time I’d added it to the dozen or so beers I’d consumed already and the extra couple of shots I had afterwards I was feeling quite unsteady on my feet. Nevertheless the advanced state of inebriation that were all in as we re-crossed the river and walked to camp through the trees did have some advantages. To begin with we were making enough noise to scare away a hundred bears and anyway we were at the stage where we didn’t really care if they ate us although someone did remark that the joke about the bells sounded even less amusing now than it had before.

Ongoing #66/Harrow Daily Poem #22

The next picture is a partially completed jungle, or possibly forest. So here is a piece of blank verse about a true story that took place in a Karin village in Northern Thailand.

The Pig

Under the villager's hut,
Between floor and muddy ground,
There is a pig.
We stand in a semi-circle,
And take its picture.
The villagers stand in a semi-circle
And watch us standing in a semi-circle
Taking its picture.
An old man smiles proudly.
"In England," he says,
"They do not have such fine pigs.

Very Much Delicious: Epilogue

Part 17 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

There is nothing of importance left to add. We had a further drive in the park on the morning of our departure but after yesterday it was inevitably an anti-climax. Yes we saw more Giraffe and more Zebra and lots of antelope but it was a weak experience by comparison. Besides that we all knew that this was effectively the end of our trip. At about mid-morning we set off back to Lilongwe and the Golden Cockroach. It was an uncomfortable and unremarkable drive. We arrived late leaving time for a lukewarm shower and a farewell meal at the Korean Garden and two hours sleep before departing for the airport. The meal was a lavish Korean banquet in a private room with plenty of booze and farewell speeches. Peter had usually been too busy cooking to join us for meals but tonight he was there and his speech was particularly sincere and heartfelt. Over the previous two weeks he had become a good friend and patient companion to us and he seemed genuinely sorry to see us go. Geoff also thanked us for our patience in the face of the numerous problems.

Then it was over. The aeroplane was taking us home. My trip to Africa was ended.

Very Much Delicious: Part 16

Part 16 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

It was the first day of the new year and we planned to spend the whole day in the Park, driving much further South than we had so far gone. Sadly Louise was feeling ill and had to stay behind to await a doctor. The rest of us though were soon under way and this time we drove straight to the airfield and then on past the plain where last night we had admired the sunset. Almost immediately we saw a group of giraffe in the distance, their long necks bobbing up from behind the trees. The distance to them was however too great and the ground between us too uneven to allow a closer approach. It didn't matter. A few minutes later we came upon a solitary male. He was chewing at a tree top in a clearing and was no more than twenty feet away. Obligingly he posed for photographs.

    Near the river we paused to stretch our legs and I spent a few minutes observing and sketching a tiny white spider that was too small to photograph. Later I identified it as one of the Salticidae, a jumping spider. Before we had set out Sarah and Sheila had complained about a rather bigger Arachnid that was sharing their cabin. That had been a large baboon spider, the African equivalent of a tarantula. Geoff had killed it with enough bug spray to fell an elephant which I thought was rather unjust. It wasn't actually hurting anybody after all.

    When we continued David was continually asking for more giraffe. My facetious comment that I would be really impressed if Geoff could find us a kangaroo received the reaction it deserved. David's wish was soon granted. We came upon four giraffe together, a little way from the road but across an even grassy stretch of ground where we could drive closer. Not only was the group more interesting than the solitary male had been but the light was much better here for photography. We all snapped away happily, David especially so. When he was done he sheepishly confided that the reason he had so keenly wanted to find more was that for the first one he had had no film in his camera.

    Our next encounter was more dramatic and had no time for pictures to be taken. We had been on a track skirting around a dried up river bed heading towards an area where we hoped to find lion. This led down through some fairly thick trees before emerging into a clearing. Of to one side, near an isolated stand of trees was an elephant, a large full grown male elephant. He trumpeted a warning and started a lumbering mock charge. We stopped. He stopped. Then he turned as if to go back into the trees. Without warning he wheeled around and with his ears flat and his trunk down he came thundering towards us in a charge that was anything but mock. Geoff slammed the Land Rover into reverse and took us back into the trees at very high speed. Satisfied that he had scared us off the elephant aborted his attack and followed us no further.

    The next excitement came when Barry caught sight of two lion in the distance on the  opposite bank of a tree filled valley which we had been following south. Geoff, who seemed to know every path and track in the park, tried to find a route round towards them but without success. We were on the verge of quitting when we found another lion, a female, resting in the shade of a tree and looking rather bored. She let us get within a few yards before yawning and walking off into the dense bush where we could not follow.

     We were going to have a picnic lunch but before that we went to the South Lodge and cooled ourselves in their swimming pool and with a few beers. We could have eaten our picnic there but instead drove away and laid out our spread on the ground at the edge of a plain that had to be a mile or more wide. A herd of hundreds of impala and puku grazed on it and there were a few dozen zebra wandering about. It was another scene from my imagined Africa.

    There was another Toyota stuck in the mud. We had come away from our lunch stop and started back North. Half a mile along the road was the Toyota. Unlike yesterday's encounter this one was accompanied by a number of mud splattered people , half of them desperately pushing and the other half desperately pulling. There was a logo for another tour operator painted on the door of the vehicle. Not only were these people clearly trying to help themselves but the chance to tow a rival operator out of the mud was one that Geoff couldn't resist. Having pulled them free we went on. Circling a tree in the distance were three vultures. Geoff steered us towards them. After half an hour of carefully manoeuvring the Land Rover between increasingly dense trees and bushes we were there. There were more vultures in a tree and a couple of hyena prowling about. Whatever was dead though we couldn't see, the undergrowth was just too thick. All the same something had died, the presence of so many scavengers proved it. We gave up trying to find it and continued on our way.

    It was getting towards sunset now and we drove out onto a plain. In the distance was a herd of elephant that was much too large to consider approaching. There were more than twenty adults and perhaps a dozen juveniles and young. They seemed peaceful enough but there was also a hyena, slinking along behind them. Suddenly they caught his scent and we found out just why keeping clear was wise. As one the herd wheeled about and thundered towards the scavenger who took to his heels and fled into the bush. Even at this distance we could hear the thunder of their pursuit. It was magnificent and frightening.

    By the time we reached the gate and left the park it was dark. We expected that there would be nothing more to see. We were mistaken. It was about a mile from the gate to the camp, mostly along roads similar to those in the park. Of course the park is a convenient fiction for the benefit of humans. The animals neither know nor care where it ends. As we approached the camp we turned a corner and there, right at the side of the road was a herd of giraffe. We stopped to watch them and more arrived, appearing as if by magic from the trees. At the end there were seventeen of them, the largest group we had seen and barely yards away. It was a stunning way to round off a perfect day.

Very Much Delicious: Part 15

Part 15 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

We were up at five thirty and for once everything went properly to the plan so that by six we were already in the park. Almost immediately there were Zebra, dozens of them grazing near the road. Nearby, perched on top of dead tree was a magnificent Batleur Eagle that took flight at our approach, rising on the powerful steady beat of its massive wings until it was a distant speck. Silhouetted against the sky was a flock of open billed stork, their distinctive shape clear even to the naked eye.
    At an algae covered pond a monitor lizard, about five foot long from nose to tail was out for its morning stroll while two Crowned Heron and a Goliath Heron, a bird so large that it could have stepped straight from the pages of a bestiary of imaginary creatures, all watched from the centre of the water.
    We drove on deeper into the park. Ahead of us we could see a vehicle, a white Toyota, off the road and in the mud. As we approached it a middle aged man in a white suit came towards us. With him were two boys aged about eleven and seventeen. The younger one looked fairly normal but the older had on a torn T-shirt and faded jeans and had rings through his nose and ear. Capped by a mass of spiky unwashed black hair he looked a real mess.
    "We are stuck." explained the main unnecessarily. His accent had the over preciseness of a Scandinavian. He was Danish we later learned.
    "Sixteen hours. No food. No water." whined the punkish teenager.
    "Have you tried to get it out ?" asked Ken.
    "Of course." replied the father. "It is not possible to move it. Do you perhaps have a rope ?"
I couldn't help thinking, and from the expressions on their faces neither could everyone else, that he couldn't have tried very hard considering that there was no mud on his white suit and even his shoes were still spotless. Geoff shrugged.
    "No, we have no rope." he said. He clearly had no inclination to help people who had no inclination to help themselves.
    "Oh. Then perhaps you could take us to the Wilderness Camp ?"
    "I don't want to lose the whole morning for my people." said Geoff "But there's a lodge here in the park. I can take one of you there and there will be someone there who can come and tow you free. The others should wait in the car. There are lion and leopard in the park."
The teenager was in the Land Rover before either his father or his brother had time to move.
We drove back towards the gate and turned off down a side road towards a group of buildings. Geoff halted and got out. A couple of park employees greeted him like a long lost brother. We couldn't hear what he was saying to them but they were obviously amused by it. One of them gestured and our sullen faced guest got out and went to them Geoff came back and in a few moments we were off again leaving the youth to negotiate a price for their assistance.
    This morning we had more time so that we went a little further into the park, past a disused and slightly overgrown airstrip that had been laid down when the park was opened. The park is huge and criss-crossed with rivers. The roads pass over them on a mixture of wooden and concrete bridges. One of them crossed high above a dried up river bed. Two hundred yards away crossing the hardened mud were a family of elephant. We watched them scramble up the bank and disappear into the trees. Half a mile further on Geoff suddenly swung the vehicle off the road and  shot at high speed between the trees. We strained to see what he had seen. It was an animal about the size of a dog with striped hindquarters and it was moving very fast as we tried to chase it down. For a moment it hesitated and then changed direction, flashing in front of us. It's face was feline apart from the rounded ears. We were too slow in turning and it had gone. Geoff stopped and got out.
    "That," he said "Was a very rare thing to see during the day. It was one of the civets and they are supposed to be completely nocturnal. You're very lucky to get one in daylight."
    By now we were feeling peckish having come out without breakfast to get an early start. By common consent we headed back to camp to eat. The rare sightings weren't quite over though. We were by now all rather blasé about the birds although the twitchers kept adding new species to the list which currently stood at more than one hundred and seventy. The Egyptian Ibis was the latest, seen several times in quick succession. Sarah however had her eyes on the ground. She had proven to be our most keen-eyed spotter and now she did it again. She banged on the roof and Geoff halted. By the side of the road was a tiny, but clearly adult antelope of a type we had not previously seen. We consulted the books while it stood patiently there and finally pinned it down as a Sharpe's Grysbok. It was one of the rarest antelope species in the reserve. As it finally moved away we caught sight of its mate, a brown blur among the green background.
    Our afternoon drive, by comparison, though producing game in abundance produced nothing that we had not already seen and when the sky started to turn black we decided to cut it short. After all here was to be a third drive today, a night drive.
In the event the threatened rain never came and when we assembled for this last drive it had turned back into a fine and sunny early evening. The park rules permit only specially licensed operators to drive around after dark so this trip was not in the Land Rover. Instead we were in a modified Toyota Land Cruiser driven by one of the camp staff. This had three tiers of seats at the back arranged so that everyone could see properly. We drove into the park and followed a similar route to the morning. The usual animals were out, warthogs, antelope, zebra - including one very heavily gravid one - lots of birds.
We went past the airstrip and down to the river. On the river plain we stopped and got out. The driver took a large plastic bottle of orange juice and shared it between us in tin cups. The sun was just touching the horizon and as its lower edge spread out into a golden glow the landscape was transformed. It was as if we had entered a new and magical land. The colours were impossibly beautiful. The trees on the far bank took on a rich shining hue as if someone had poured honey on them and as we watched it deepened into the colour of flames. Meanwhile the water darkened to a cold black mirror reflecting the trees as a ribbon of fire. Behind us the trees on the plain became black skeletal monsters silhouetted against the darkening bruise of the sunset. Everything was perfect. This, I thought, is how I've always imagined Africa.
    Then someone turned off the lights. The sun dropped from view and it became night. We climbed back into the Land Cruiser and the co-driver turned on a spotlight whose piercing beam stabbed out for a thousand yards and made the surrounding darkness seem so much deeper that it was as if we were driving along an infinite black tunnel. At first all we found were smaller nocturnal creatures, genet, elephant shrew, slender mongoose and a white tailed mongoose. Then, as we came around a bend there was a solitary giraffe. As the beam illuminated him he gave us a disdainful look, turned his back and strode haughtily into the trees.
    Further along the beam froze a large group of puku, their eyes glowing like a field of tiny stars. Circling them, sly and sinister, a hyena stalked, seemingly undecided about where to go or what to do. A few minutes later we found out what he was waiting for as the beam found a leopard, slinking low against the ground, choosing its supper from the herd. Hyena are scavengers. This one would wait until the leopard was done and then feast on the remains.
Down by the river the he swept the lamp towards a loud grunting and found two hippo facing off for a fight. They charged each other, veering off at the last moment for a bone crunching shoulder to shoulder collision. Suddenly one of them lost his nerve and turned and lumbered off into the darkness leaving the victor to voice his throaty triumphal laugh.
    We returned to the road, pausing to let an elephant cross, and drove on. Suddenly there were lion in the beam - two males, one old and slow and limping and the other younger and leaner. They watched us approach. Neither seemed at all aggressive but no-one felt like leaving the safety of the vehicle for a closer look.
    It had been a magnificent drive. Even Barry had to admit that it was one of the best that he had ever been on.
    "You can be out for a week without seeing as much." he said as we climbed out of our seats back at the camp.
    There was a roaring fire going over which Geoff was grilling chops. After a couple of beers we were ready to eat and to go with the chops Peter had done a thick, rich bean soup and pancakes filled with a delicious tangy cheese and vegetable combination. As we ate an exhausted but satisfied silence fell. Everyone was reflecting on what a great day it had been. When we had finished, clearing our palates of the rich tastes with a light fruit salad, everyone retired to bed, oblivious of the fact that this was New Years Eve. Further festivities would have felt redundant, not to mention being more than any of us could have managed.

Very Much Delicious: Part 14

Part 14 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Africa just kept defeating us. All our carefully laid plans constantly fell apart. We were up and ready on time but the Land Rover had yet another puncture. It was six O'clock before we set off and a string of further problems with the new wheel delayed us further. We stopped at a garage and ate a breakfast of cheese sandwiches and boiled eggs and watched a group of children playing 'whips and tops' with a corn cob and a piece of string while Geoff organised some repairs to the wheels. Running an hour and a half late already we arrived in Lilongwe. 
    Our bad luck continued unabated. The coffee shop that he had told us about had a large notice on the door saying that it would re-open on the 3rd January. After an hour of looking around we found a back street coffee shop and sat down to order. They had run out of coffee. By the time they had sent someone down to the shops and bought some, a freshly laundered and shaved Geoff was back and we had no time left to drink it.
    We were now on our way to Zambia and this close to the capital the roads were of a good quality so that we could make up some of the lost time. It seemed only a short time later that we approached the first of the two border posts which are separated by a bizarre half mile of what is technically still Malawi but which even the residents need a pass to enter or leave. Everyone had expected difficulties at the border and we had built a delay into our schedule to allow for them. In the event we were astonished at the speed and ease of our processing. We were through and moving again, passports stamped, in under five minutes. The Zambian border control at the other end of the half a mile limbo was equally brisk so that before we knew it we were in Zambia with almost all of our lost time made up.
It was now early afternoon and we were all hungry. Just over the border there was a petrol station with a snack bar where we bought hot pies and a kind of doughy bread with mince on top passing itself off as a 'pizza'. The quality was indifferent but we were hungry and it was hot and no-one was complaining.
    When we moved on it was onto a sandy road with an uneven surface that bounced and bruised us as Geoff made up the remaining time and even managed to pull ahead of schedule. The countryside here was very different from Malawi. Zambia has never had the slash and burn approach to ecology that the Malawian administration has so that first impressions of it are of a country that is much greener. Another difference is apparent on closer examination. Much of Malawi is forested with exotic imported plantations, Japanese Pine for example. The Zambian forests are almost entirely composed of indigenous hardwoods.
We were on the road for several more hours so that once again it was late afternoon when we arrived at our accommodation at the Wildlife Centre which is just outside the South Luanda National Park. This consisted of a group of sturdy bamboo chalets and a separate dining area. There was more to it than that of course. The camp is actually quite large and at the other end of it, separated from us by a camping area, were more chalets and a restaurant and bar. However the north section of it is self contained and we had it to ourselves. We quickly sorted ourselves out, leaving our bags without unpacking in our eagerness to get our first look at what had been promised would be the best game viewing in Southern Africa. In a matter of minutes we were on top of the Land Rover and approaching the main gate.
    Inside we stopped on the wide concrete bridge that spans the river and looked at the panorama that was spread out around us. In the distance the hippo were still laughing at that dirty joke, their booming voices echoing along the river. Fishermen poled fragile looking boats along it. Hundreds of starlings swifts and swallows swooped and dived in their aerial ballet. On the far side of the bridge the trees thickened quickly into a green wall. We drove over and immediately saw our first animal. It was Bambi. Standing at the side of the path completely unafraid and staring up at us with wide innocent eyes. We drove on, catching a glimpse of a family of warthogs as they scampered away from us with their tails comically pointing straight up like the antenna on a radio controlled car. It was beginning to get dark but we saw all of the usual antelope species again. For the thousandth time Geoff told David that they were not deer and could not be deer because there are no deer in Africa.
    "OK," David agreed, also for the thousandth time "Antelope they are."
At a bend in the road, less than ten feet away from us, there was an elephant - a young adult scraping itself against a tree as if it was trying to get rid of an itch. Or perhaps trying to get rid of the tree. We drove down to the river, past one of the enormous termite mounds that were still with us even now we were in Zambia. As the sun started to set we parked and stretched our legs and drank bottles of beer. Across the water the hippo were beginning their nocturnal perambulations. In the air two brightly coloured kingfisher flashed down repeatedly skimming the surface of the water. When it became too dark to remain we piled into the Land Rover and headed for home. It had been a short excursion after a long day but it was at least a taster of what was to come.

Very Much Delicious: Part 13

Part 13 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Sometime during the night I had been awakened by the unmistakable sound of vomiting in the bathroom and had been uncharitable enough to think that it served him right. Now, at six O'clock in the morning, I was not quite as amused. I had been intending to take a bath but one look at the congealing mess in the bottom of the tub decided me against the idea. I washed and shaved at the sink as quickly as I could, carefully avoiding breathing as far as possible, and went for a walk.  Peter was already loading things onto the roof of the Land Rover. There seemed to be no-one else around and after half an hour I went back and finished my packing. Barry was doing a fair impression of a corpse and still hadn't moved by the time I was ready to take my bags down for loading and head to the restaurant for breakfast. By the end of breakfast he still hadn't surfaced and I was sent to wake him.

    Our first stop was at a sort of craft market. Here a couple of dozen stalls were laid out selling every type of carving conceivable. There were of course the ubiquitous tables and traditional animal carvings side by side with salt shakers and chess sets. Several people were selling the wooden chairs that are as common as the tables and almost as ingenious in their construction. Carved from two interlocking pieces of wood they are surprisingly comfortable and come in a range of sizes from dolls house to gargantuan. One of the traders wanted to swap two for my jacket. Had I had any way to get them home I would probably have taken him up on the offer.

From the market we carried on along the route that we had originally come from Lilongwe and, after a detour to avoid a washed out road, eventually came to Salima where we were to stay at a house at the Wheelhouse Resort. This turned out to be a large former colonial residence built into the side of the mountain in such a way that some of the walls and floors were formed from the rocks themselves. It was a rambling building on several levels with large spacious rooms that looked as if Stewart Granger or Trevor Howard should be leaning on the cocktail bar in their immaculate Safari suits discussing the season's elephant hunting.

The resort was named for its bar, a circular thatched building raised on stilts looking out across the reed marshes towards the lake. We passed this on our afternoon ramble which led us down through the rushes and to an unusual fish farm. This consisted of a large warehouse like building filled with small tanks and two equally large open air areas filled with big tanks. The operation was set up a few years ago to breed tropical fish from the lake for resale abroad and is now the largest supplier of exotic aquatics in Africa. There are more than two hundred species bred there and supplied to collectors all over the world.

By the time we had been shown around it was almost sunset and we headed back for a few beers in the bar before taking an early dinner and an early night. Tomorrow was to be yet another travelling day and our longest yet taking us all the way to the South Luanda National Park in Zambia. We were to be up for five a.m. to make sure that we could get there at a reasonable hour.

Very Much Delicious: Part 12

Part 12 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Even before we were ready for breakfast the locals were setting out their wares to sell to us. As we ate they maintained a reasonable distance but almost as soon as we were finished they clustered around us. As we bartered the others started arriving from their mountain trip. They were tired and hot and dirty and not at all pleased to find that in addition to the power not having been restored the water supply had now also failed. However they soon realised that there was a river nearby and went off to bathe in its icy waters. By the time they had returned the buying and selling were in full swing. I had brought a CD rack and a table similar to the one we had seen at Zomba but, as Geoff had predicted, both nicer and cheaper. Sheila had bought what seemed like dozens of carved wooden boxes. Barry had also bought a table. Sometime during this market a group of local teenagers came running up with a chameleon on a stick. Sheila had particularly wanted to see one and they had gone and found one for her. It was a strange looking thing but harmless enough to allow it to walk on our bare hands. The Malawians though are very superstitious about them and would not handle it at all.
The salesmen were persistent and even when it was clear that no-one was going to buy anything else they were reluctant to give up. Fortunately a car arrived at one of the other houses further along the road and sensing better sales prospects they all hurried away after it.

Soon we were under way. Today was almost completely a travelling day. The journey was long and dull and covered much of the same route we had come by. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived at the Nkapola Lodge Hotel. This is a modern and well laid out up-market hotel owned by the same group that own the Ku Chawe Inn at Zomba. It is situated right on the shore of Lake Malawi. The rooms are well furnished with every bed having a permanent and spacious mosquito net and with a large fan lazily circulating the air to keep the temperature down.
I spent the rest of the afternoon having a long soak in a hot bath, wandering around the extensive grounds and having a drink on the terrace bar. Outside the hotel rooms, which opened directly onto a tree covered rocky hillside, a large group of rock hyrax were constantly keeping a watchful eye on us. These animals look like large chipmunks and are friendly and inquisitive. On the roofs and the ground vervet monkeys were a little shyer of human contact, scurrying around happily until anyone approached closer than about thirty feet when they would run and leap away with amazing speed and agility. It seemed a nice enough place for an interlude but, animals aside, the atmosphere was too much like any other beach resort with teenagers in swimming costumes playing volleyball on the sand and youngsters being entertained by a disc jockey playing loud disco music to them. While I was glad enough of the chance to use civilised facilities I was also glad that we would only be spending one night there, more than that would send me crazy.
We had arrived on a day when the hotel had organised a beach barbecue for the evening so that our meal was taken at a long table beneath the stars, The food was excellent with an enormous variety of vegetables, meat and fish as well as soups and salads for a first course and trifles, cakes, fruit salads, ice cream and such for dessert. I sat near the end talking to Geoff and Charlotte. Little Kenny was feigning sleep on a mattress behind them.
Barry was irritating me again. He had been spouting off rather pompously about wine and had ordered several bottles of quite expensive white - apparently to prove a point. So much had he ordered that there was a bottle and a half of it still in front of him when everyone else was ready for bed. I sat and finished my beer and listened to him complaining how he was buying all the wine and no-one else was paying for it. I pointed out rather too sharply that as I wasn't drinking the stuff I felt under no obligation to contribute towards it. He seemed a little put out at my brusque tone but I also felt no obligation to be polite.

I finished my beer and left him alone with his bottles.

Very Much Delicious: Part 11

Part 11 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

After a breakfast of a little bread and fruit I waited outside the house for the guide who was to take Sheila and I on a walk to the waterfall. Peter and Barry were looking at the Land Rover which seemed to have developed yet another puncture. Rather than leave it and waste time when Geoff and the others returned we decided to put on the spare wheel and then for Barry and Peter to take the damaged one to town for repair. They were on their way by the time the guide, Anthony, arrived.

The first section of our walk followed the route taken yesterday by our more adventurous colleagues. We started off up the hill and I was surprised to discover that our houses were only the start of a fairly extensive village with some quite affluent looking buildings including a school and a community hall.

Anthony proved to be a chatty sort of a guide. He was, we discovered, in the final year of high school and worked as a guide in his holidays to earn money ready for University in Zomba. He wanted to go to Chancellor College to study medicine but after that he wanted to work in the villages not at the more lucrative city clinics. We talked as we walked. The views back down the hill and out across the valley were spectacular and while there were no animals and few birds to be seen there were lots of colourful flowers and occasional bright butterflies.

Anthony's school curriculum consisted of maths, English, biology, geography and bible knowledge - all of which were compulsory. I questioned him more closely. His courses seemed to be an eccentric blend. In biology he had learned basic anatomy and how to distil spirits. His history lessons, while largely restricted to Malawian history were often entirely contradictory on even such elementary facts as when Hastings Banda was born. In English the set books were Macbeth and The Diary of Anne Frank. This led us to another peculiar discrepancy - this time in his English which was really very good. While he knew words like 'pulmonary' and  'aorta' he had just come across the phrase 'Is this a dagger that I see before me ?' and had no idea at all of what a dagger might be. Having told him, I then found myself discussing the guilt that Macbeth felt and the way that it led to the visions of ghosts and phantom daggers. He seemed to be memorising every word I said.

    After about half an hour the route separated from the one to the mountain hut and levelled out. At the top of the rise we came to a logging camp. We went through it and started down the other side. At the bottom was the waterfall. This was hardly spectacular but was a pleasant place to stop made more pleasant by the flask of tea and packet of biscuits that we had brought with us.

    We returned by a different but no less scenic route. Anthony obligingly pointed out whatever animals and flowers he could find and while the animals were mainly lizards and frogs they were nevertheless interesting. One lizard, only feet away from us was almost invisible against the bark of a tree until it moved its head. On a moss covered rock face there were tiny green and yellow frogs, less than a centimetre long.  A large red and black insect buzzed around a group of purple flowers.

    We were off course still on the lookout for the absent birds. It was Sheila who spotted the large bird of prey in the distance. We watched for some time through binoculars, carefully noting down everything we could about it to help in later identification. When we got back to the houses Barry was sitting outside talking to two Malawi children, aged about six or seven who had been playing with Kenny. We quickly borrowed his books and soon had it worked identified as a Honey Buzzard.While we had been away the power had failed and the meat which Peter had transferred from the trailer to the refrigerator in the house had gone off. Not to be defeated by this he lit a fire on the back porch and cooked us a delicious concoction from tinned tuna fish and vegetables. I decided that if I wasn't cured by now I wasn't going to be and joined in the meal which we ate by candle light. As the power hadn't returned when we had finished we chose to have an early night.

Very Much Delicious: Part 10

Part 10 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Still a little unsure of my stomach I chose not to eat breakfast before our next travelling day. We started with a short drive down to Zomba where Geoff went off to get our repaired wheel and the rest of us spent an hour exploring the densely packed stalls of Zomba Market. This is a large market with a number of brick halls in it as well as hundreds of wooden stalls. Two of the buildings are filled with fruit and vegetables while a third sells only grain and rice and a fourth sells fish that, judging by the smell, is already a long way past its edible date.

    We left Zomba on a very bad road which had once been tarmacked but had deteriorated to the point where it was very nearly undrivable. It was made worse by the standard of local driving and a use of signals so eccentric as to border on the surreal. Most drivers use their left signal to indicate to traffic behind them that there is traffic ahead of them, their right indicator to indicate that there is no traffic ahead of them and both indicators together to indicate that they are too drunk to be able to see whether there is traffic ahead or not. Nobody ever uses them to indicate an intention to turn. The result was a fraught and unpleasant couple of hours being rattled around like marbles in a tin can listening to Geoff blast the horn as time after time he was forced to lean on it to encourage people to get out of the way.

There were occasional distractions.

We drove for several miles through tea plantations where there were hundreds of pickers all dressed in yellow oilskins against the dreadful weather.

At a point where the road was being repaired we were diverted past on a sandy track and looking at the work being done it became obvious why the roads disintegrated so easily. It was being constructed by laying a paper thin layer of tarmac on top of an equally thin layer of coarse gravel which was laid directly on top of the sandy ground.

We were forced to stop to tighten the nuts on one of our wheels near a coffee plantation where we got out and stretched our legs for a few minutes and took a few pictures in the grey light of the rain soaked morning.

A funeral procession of dozens of slow moving mourners blocked the road. We tried to pass and an angry mourner, appalled at our disrespect banged on our windows and shouted abuse.

    At Mulanje town we turned off this highway onto a dirt track and once again I noticed that the quality of the dirt roads was actually much higher than the tarmac ones. We paused to let someone climb on board. He turned out to be the leader of the porters who would go up Mount Mulanje. A few minutes later we reached a group of single storey brick buildings. Before we had even come to a halt a group of locals were gathered trying to sell us things. Geoff was having none of it. He told them sharply that no-one would be buying anything today and that anyone who hung around wouldn't be welcome when we did buy things in two days time. Reluctantly they all packed up their selections of traditional carved animals, traditional carved tables, traditional carved boxes and traditional carved CD racks and left.

Geoff turned to us.

    "Now, " he said "I've decided that those of us going up the mountain will be going today. In about twenty minutes. The weather has cleared up for the moment and as we can't guarantee tomorrow we will go while we have the chance. Sheila, Barry and Bob have decided to stay behind so how do the rest of you feel ?"

There were some grumblings and misgivings but Louise, David and Sarah all agreed. An hour later, rather than the expected twenty minutes, they were on their way.

    Mount Mulanje is an isolated block of mountains covering about 245 square miles. It rises from a flat and featureless plain 2000 feet above sea level. The granite peak, Sapitwa4, is the highest in central Africa at almost 10000 feet. The whole mountain is covered by a variety of trees, brachystegia, imported exotic pines and eucalyptus and the endemic Mulanje Cedar from whose aromatic wood so many of the carvings are made. This tree is unique to the massif. Typically it reaches 140 feet with a clear trunk to about 60 feet and a base diameter of 5 or 6 feet. However over-felling and poaching of the wood is causing severe deforestation.

    The house where we were staying was two bedroomed with a small dining room, a kitchen and a toilet and shower room. The bedrooms each contained two primitive and uncomfortable beds, the dining rooms a couple of chairs and a table, the kitchen a sink with a single tap and a gas ring and the toilet a similar sink, a flush toilet and an unhygienic looking shower.

    It was because of my continuing stomach problems that I had decided not to do the optional ascent. At lunch I had foolishly decided to eat a few sandwiches, having not eaten for the previous twenty four hours. It had been a mistake and several more trips to the toilet convinced me that not climbing the mountain had been a good idea. It also convinced me not to eat in the evening. Nevertheless I did join the others while they ate and when the meal was over we sat around talking. Part of the conversation demonstrated exactly what was wrong with Barry. I had told the story of how when I was in Cuzco in Peru I had given a pen to a child begging in the main city square. The next day the same child had come up to me and proudly showed me that he still had the pen. Barry of course could do better. In his version of the story he had not given a beggar a pen because that would have been encouraging a dependency culture. Instead he had sat down and given the child an English lesson. Several other children had come until he was taking a whole class. The next day the child was back with one of his teachers from school who insisted that Barry should go with her to the school and teach a class of the teachers. He had ended up, or so he said, as a guest lecturer at the University.

    I have no idea whether story was entirely true, entirely fictional or somewhere in between, and I don't really care. It simply illustrates the kind of automatic self-satisfaction bordering on piety that made up almost all of his conversation.

When the conversation died, murdered by the tortuous nature of Barry's anecdotes, we all retired for the night.

Very Much Delicious: Part 9

Part 9 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Up until now we had been eating fresh food bought by Peter from the local markets and everything had been fine. Now, after our night in a 'good hotel' three of us had stomach problems in varying degrees of unpleasantness.
I ate a full English breakfast on the balcony of the restaurant but almost immediately knew that I was going to regret it. Sheila failed to show for breakfast at all, already suffering. David ate only toast and black tea, stoically ignoring his condition. Afterwards everyone apart from Sheila assembled for a walk. Immediately outside the hotel were a number of the local entrepreneurs selling carvings. Geoff picked up a table, the three legs of which were carved from a single piece of wood, the circular top being carved into a series of pictures of animals.
"This has been painted," he said "And it's spoiled it completely. You'll see the same sort of thing done much better and much cheaper later on." He put it back. The salesman seemed unperturbed by the criticism.
Further down the path two teenagers ran up and thrust a large piece of quartz into Geoff's hands. He turned it over.
"They get this from the quarry," he explained "But this piece is no good, the facets are cracked and scuffed and all of the points are blunted."
He dropped it into his pocket and went to walk away. The teenagers were outraged.
"You must pay," they cried "Three hundred kwatcha."
He feigned innocence.
"You gave it to me. A gift."
"No, no. Three hundred kwatcha."
He took it out again and frowned.
"But I didn't ask you to give it to me."
"Only to look. To see if you buy." they said.
"OK, I've looked."
He tossed it back to them and they went off in search of easier customers.
We strolled on down the hill leaving them behind. Soon we turned off the road onto a narrow path that ran alongside a river. The trees and plants hung out over the clear water in which we caught occasional glimpses of brown trout. A bright flash of scarlet darted between the trees.
"Livingstone's Lourie," said Geoff  "That bright red is only visible when they're in flight."
At a waterfall where the banks of the river opened out onto a broad expanse of flat white rocks we took a break before beginning to double back towards the hotel. A large bird of prey flashed down from the trees and skimmed the surface of the water with its talons before disappearing into the undergrowth on the far bank - but it was too fast for the bird watchers to identify. There was a palpable sense of frustration from them.
David spotted a Simonga Monkey, sitting in a tree watching us. We managed to get quite close before it was overcome with shyness and leapt from branch to branch deeper into the forest to escape our attention.
At a junction we took the opposite fork to the one we had approached by and headed past a derelict trout farm. The chain link fence had long since been appropriated by some needy farmer but a hand painted sign still proclaimed. "Trout Farm - Entrance 12 Tambala". Geoff told us that though the place had now been closed for years there was still a man employed to look after it.
Back on the main road we were approached by more teenagers with quartz. When Geoff had had the last piece in his pocket a tiny splinter had broken off. As they approached he fished it out and held it up to them.
"I sell you quartz" he said "Only one hundred and fifty kwatcha."
They looked baffled.
"No," they said "You buy quartz."
"No, no, no, no, no." he said, rolling his eyes theatrically "I already have quartz. I sell to you."
"But we already have quartz." they responded.
Geoff smiled.
"Good. Good. We all have quartz." He dropped his piece back in his pocket and walked away. The teenage salesmen stood where they were wondering what had just gone on.

Lunch was an enormous and varied open air buffet spread out on tables in the grounds of the hotel. There was turkey, chicken, beef, pork, fish, fifty different vegetables, stews, fricassees, cakes, trifles - everything that anyone could want - and I couldn't have any of it. During the morning I had been to the toilet six times. Eating anything at all was not a good idea. While the others went to the party I went to sit on the patio of my room and read a book. There seemed no sense in making myself unhappy by watching everyone else eat a good meal. When I judged that they would have finished eating I went to join them in watching the entertainment that the hotel had laid on for Christmas.
A dance troupe were there, entertaining an enormous crowd of guests, accompanied by half a dozen drummers pounding out hypnotically complex rhythms on traditional instruments. Afterwards there was a Santa Claus in the shape of a large black African in red robes with a white Ku Klux Klan style hood cut into strips at the bottom to represent a beard. He looked extremely sinister and evil and unsurprisingly the children for whom he had presents had to be dragged to him in terror.

In the late afternoon we rounded off the day by driving up to the Emperor's viewpoint and watching the sun set over the valley before returning to the hotel.

Very Much Delicious: Part 8

Part 8 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Christmas Eve began with a repeat of yesterday's walk and as then there were lots of colourful birds and insects and butterflies but, apart from various antelope, no large game. After we had returned and had breakfast we took the boat back across the river to depart.  Already getting ready on the far bank were the two South Africans. Geoff said that he wanted to be away before them because the Unimog would churn up the roads even more badly than they had already been. The back door of the Unimog was open and I looked inside. It looked like an explosion at a rubbish dump. Boxes and bags had been thrown in randomly with their contents spilling out onto the floor. They had managed to pack less into that enormous space than Peter could get onto our roof. The younger one walked round and closed the door.
    "Look," said someone. I turned around. David was pointing off into the trees. There in a clearing about twenty yards away were a family of elephants, three adults and two young. The South Africans showed no interest in our sighting. I wondered if perhaps they had a list of 'things to see in Africa' and had already ticked of 'elephant'. We approached the group slowly. elephants have very poor eyesight and, perhaps surprisingly, even poorer hearing. If you approach carefully and from downwind it's easy to get within yards of them and it's also easy to tell when you are downwind. We had been there for about fifteen minutes before one of them finally noticed our intrusion. He became visibly agitated and the whole group moved off into the bush. Pleased with such a close sighting we went back to where we were parked.
    While we had been engrossed the South Africans had departed. Now we climbed into the Land Rover and followed, trying to avoid the deeper ruts left by their tyres. About half a mile later two things happened. First it started to rain but not with anything resembling a British downpour. It was, Barry said with some satisfaction, a real African rain. The drops were the size of walnuts and coming down like bullets from the sky, hard enough to raise bruises on sensitive skin. Second, we came to a halt, stopped by the Unimog which had broken down in the road blocking it completely. Geoff got out to assess the situation. When he returned he told us that he thought he could get round on the treacherous mudbank that led down into the waterlogged field but it would be safer if we could all get out first. Reluctantly we did so, huddling for shelter at the side of the broken down truck. Ten minutes later Geoff had accomplished the tricky manoeuvre and we were back inside, soaked and steaming, while the South Africans were behind us attempting to fix their holed Vacuum box on the brakes after some advice from Ken.
    "The trouble is they've bought it but don't know how to drive it or look after it." Geoff said. "Those repairs will hold for a while but they will have to keep re-doing them every couple of miles until they can get a welder to patch it up properly."

    Today we were to drive to Zomba and were soon on our way. Zomba was the capital city of Malawi until 1975 and the seat of Parliament as recently as 1994. The Bradt Guide describes it as 'the most immediately appealing' of Malawi's larger towns and it certainly presents a more pleasing aspect than Lilongwe.
    The buildings have a kind of faded colonial grandeur and when we parked at the PTC the street was wide, clean and pleasant in spite of the salesmen hassling us to buy their souvenirs. After a brief detour to drop off our damaged tyre we drove out of the town and up the hill towards the Zomba Plateau and the Ku Chawe Inn where we would be staying for two nights.
    The hotel is right on the edge of the plateau and has stunning views of what seems to be the whole rift valley laid out before you. Architecturally the hotel is also quite stunning being both ultra modern and deeply African. It's arched corridors and reception lead into a small bar decorated with African carvings and then open out into a restaurant and balcony that overlooks first the tiers of the hotel's gardens and beyond them the valley.
    We sat in the bar for an hour having a leisurely drink while the rooms were being prepared and then we checked in. The rooms were in keeping with the general quality of the hotel. Large and well decorated they were all fully en suite with balconies with gorgeous views and even with television.
    "Can we make a deal ?" I asked. Barry looked up from unpacking.
    "I won't turn the TV on if you don't." I said
    "I never watch television." he said humourlessly.

    We all met up again in the bar before dinner and discovered that tonight there was a special Christmas Menu. Moving to the restaurant we found a table ready for us at the end of a large and festively decorated room with a band playing traditional music at the other end and lots of people already enjoying Christmas. Pretty soon the beer and wine were flowing freely and it was a slightly drunk group of people that eventually drifted off to their rooms. It was not, I reflected, what people back home expect of me at Christmas. There was proper food in a posh hotel and not a hole in the ground in sight.

Very Much Delicious: Part 7

Part 7 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

We had entered the camp after dark so that we had little or no chance to assess it. In the pale early morning I took a stroll around. Mvuu Camp is managed by Central African Wilderness Safaris and even if all of their staff look to be in their teens it is nevertheless an attractive and professional operation. The main building which houses the bar and restaurant looks out dramatically over the river where hippo, crocodile and elephant can be watched while you sit and eat your meals or sip long cold drinks. Lizards and small mammals wander right up to the walls or climb the trees to watch you. The enclosed part of the camp has ten luxurious twin bedded tents each surrounded by sturdily constructed bamboo screens and roofs. There is a clean and modern shower and toilet block which serves both these tents and the adjacent camping site.

A map provided in the tent detailed every tree in the enclosure, describing their Latin and English names and main characteristics. The one standing immediately in front of our tent was a 'Toad Tree', presumably so named because of its warty and scabrous bark. Scraping against the trunk I discovered that it had a sticky white, unpleasant smelling sap.

I had spent much of yesterday coughing and sniffling and today it had developed into a nasty head cold with streaming eyes and a sore throat. All the same after a good breakfast I joined the others for a bush walk. Our guide was Sean who looked about seventeen and put you in mind of an Australian Lifeguard. He was accompanied by a uniformed and armed guard without whom we would not have been allowed out of the enclosure.

"Remember," said Sean, "This is not a zoo. The animals here are wild and that means that they can be dangerous. If we come across any lion or elephant there will be no danger to anyone providing you do as I tell you."

We set off. Although it was still early morning the sun was already very hot. I soon wished that I hadn't forgotten to bring my hat from the tent. At first all we found were tracks and droppings - impala, bushbuck, hippopotamus, elephant, baboon - but soon we entered a clearing to see a group of baboon running off into the trees. The ground was littered with broken shells and destroyed fruit. Sean indicated a number of holes which the baboons had clearly been digging at.

"These holes were where crocodile had laid their eggs," he told us. "The interesting thing about crocodile eggs is that the sex of the hatchling depends entirely on the temperature at which the egg was incubated. The deeper, colder eggs hatch into females and the shallower warmer ones into males. These won't be hatching into anything, the baboon have destroyed them all."

We went on. Everywhere there were brightly coloured birds, from tiny bee eaters to massive majestic fish eagles. There were also antelope of every type that we had seen so far. A fenced off enclosure had warning notices explaining that the fence carried lethal voltages and the park rangers operated a shoot to kill policy on poachers. This marked the boundary of a large area set aside for a pair of breeding black rhino which the park is keen to keep safe. They were nowhere to be seen and naturally we could not go in to look for them.

Poaching is one of the most serious problems in Malawi. Some of the reserves have been poached to the point where they no longer contain any large game at all. Liwonde has not yet reached such a sorry state but poaching is still thought of as the largest single threat to the animals. And it isn't just the animals. Around the country young trees are illegally felled by poachers who sell the wood which often ends up in the carvings sold to tourists. Technically a permit is required but few have them.

Arriving back at camp we were almost run over by a large armoured vehicle, a Unimog. This is a four wheel drive vehicle with a vengeance. It looked like it should be part of a military invasion force and was driven by two bullet headed, khaki clad men with army style crew cuts. The looked like Nazi storm troopers. The reality was more mundane. They were a South African father and son who had decided that this mode of transport was the best way to see more of Africa. At that moment they were driving round to the far side of the river, where we were parked, to allow them and early start tomorrow.

In the afternoon we took a boat ride down the river. This gave us a chance to observe more closely the hippopotamus and crocodile. Osman, our new guide, proved to be exceptional at identifying birds from a single glimpse of their plumage or a few seconds of their song. As we moved down the river he told us an African folk tale of 'Why The hippo Yawns'.

We continued downstream until the sun started to set and then Osman killed the engine and let us drift there in silence watching as the sky turned first red then a glorious gold as the afterglow lit up the clouds from below the horizon. Now that it was dark we sailed back up river with Osman picking out details on the banks with a powerful spotlight

hippo lumbered up the muddy shores, ungainly certainly but with an air of massive unstopability.

crocodile slithered from the beam as soon as it touched them to glide silently across the water, just below the surface.

A tree full of heron remained motionless while the light was upon them and took to the air as one when he flicked it away for a moment.

A malachite kingfisher with its spectacular plumage was pinned to a branch by the lamp, so hypnotised that we could get within feet of it for close up photographs.

The bright tunnel of the beam was filled with a million flying insects, their motion forming strange stroboscopic geometries as their wings flickered in the light.

All too soon it was over and we were back at camp. After another of Peter's excellent meals I decided that rather than go to the bar I would take an early night and try to sleep off the remainder of my cold.