Lake Malawi: Nkhata Bay

Just a side note: I forgot to write about this in my Zambia blog but when we were on our safari, right after we saw the leopard make that crazy kill and drag the impala off into the bushes, our truck got stuck in the mud.  Maybe 30 yards away from where we knew the leopard was... clearly the best option was to get out of the safari car and push it.  And we did. All of us piled out of the car and sunk knee deep in mud and pushed our car out praying that the leopard was no longer hungry, or that he didn't have any friends near by.

ANYWAYS!  Lake Malawi was our next stop and I might say it was my favorite.  We got off our bus and it was dark outside so we couldn't really see anything.  We got up to our little hostel and the price of a chalet on the beach was like a dollar more then camping so we chose beds for the first time in more than a week (heaven) and decided we might as well get right into things... although we couldn't see a thing, we got in our swim suits and went for a night swim.  The water was warm and calm and so relaxing.   We woke up the next morning to find ourselves pretty much in paradise.

We spent the morning relaxing on our porch and enjoying the water but then we decided we wanted to go explore the little town and find out about the volunteering that was available.  We wandered around this adorable little town where everyone was selling fish and tomatoes and yummy different breads.  Elections were also going on so there were people dancing and singing in the streets to promote the president.  Then we found the volunteering guy who said the village was an 8 hour boat ride from where we were and the boat was leaving at 8 am the next day so that worked out kind of perfect.  

So we spent the afternoon on this little motor boat with a local named Happy Coconut who took us fishing- crazy fishing strategy, the line goes like 50 meters down and there are two lines per pole.  Fun Fact: Lake Malawi is deeper than the ocean, no one has ever been able to find the bottom of it. So the fish are wayyyyyy down there.  Sad day we didn't catch anything but it was fun to try anyways. 

After we attempted to catch dinner, Happy Coconut took us to this place and we fed fish eagles.  It was way cool- we skewered some dead fish with sticks and threw them into the water, Happy Coconut made some awesome whistling noise through his teeth to call the eagles over then they would swoop down and snatch then. Pretty neat.

To finish our little boat trip off, we went to this set of rocks and went cliff jumping which was really fun too.  It wasn't too high but it was still fun!

Then I had a moment of weakness and stupidity. Happy Coconut really liked my hair which was long a beautiful and told me he wanted to dread lock it and guess what?  I decided "hey why not!" and now... after two hours of twisting and ripping and teasing my hair (accompanied by lots of pain), I have dread locks.  NOT PERMANENT though, I am taking them out in a week so that I don't have to shave my whole head but I actually sort of like them.  I think they look cool and I dont have to do anything with my hair ever!

That was about it for our day, by the time he finished I was pretty pooped out so we went to a different local place and played pool for a few hours before we back to our chalet on the beach and knocked out.