Having had a good nights sleep, I woke feeling a bit bad about the 'Thomas situation', so decided to get up and see him off. He had told us the night before that he would be leaving at about 7am.Obviously he hated the place so much that he went even earlier as his room was empty when I went to look. We later found out he left the key with the night watchman at 6am. Oh well, you can't be friendly with everyone!
After breakfast we headed to the minibus stand to catch a bus to Mzuzu. With some moving of passengers, they found space on the bus for us and we were on our way. We were only about 50km form Mzuzu, but the journey seemed to take ages. The constant stopping for passengers and the fairly steeply climbing road meant that we never really got going. When we eventually got to the city, it was a relief to get off the bus. Mzuzu is the main town in the area and one of few places in Malawi where we could supposedly sort out our internet issues. More recently and rather sadly it was also the scene of some heavy rioting during recent government protests, which resulted in the police killing several people. We have already been informed that more protests have been planned for August 17th, so we have been told to not travel on that day. We will be keeping an eye on the situation, which will hopefully turn out to be relatively peaceful and confined to the major centres.
Leaving the bus station we asked some directions and found the Airtel office, where a helpful staff member soon had our internet up and running. There was nothing wrong with the sim, we just needed to tell the computer to dial the correct number. With the first task completed, we stopped in a few supermarkets, had a nice Indian lunch, withdrew some more money and went to have a look at the market. Mzuzu market is great! We found a huge amount of fresh fruit and vegetables and wandering through the narrow winding alleys between the stalls was fascinating.
Our brief visit to Mzuzu had been a successful one, but we were ready to get back to Nkhata Bay.
The return journey was in a more dilapidated minibus than we had arrived on, but this time we were sitting together. Having paid 400kwacha (£1:70) each on the way, when we were told 450kwacha for the way back we started to walk off until they agreed on 400kwacha. Unfortunately everyone else was told the fare was 450kwacha so oops, it looks like we haggled when we shouldn't have! As the road was mainly downhill we got back to Nkhata Bay much quicker than the outbound journey, although we were considerably more shaken up!
Back at 'Big Blue Star' we settled in for the afternoon, eventually deciding to eat at the restaurant as we really couldn't face going out again. The cycle tourists who we had met yesterday had moved to our guest-house so I had a brief chat with them. Joseba and Corinne started in Cairo and are heading south like us, but will be following a different route. We will stay in touch and hopefully bump into them again closer to Cape Town.
It has been a successful day and we will spend one more day here and then head onwards to 'Kande Beach'. It is a beautiful spot to while away some time and with our need to be settled somewhere by August 17th, there really is no rush.
Are you bored of blogging, here I am looking for an update and ---- nothing. Hope it's all going well. Mark
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