It was a long old day making the trip down to Lilongwe. Inspiration caused me to send a text message to Akpongo and I was rewarded by the news that we were heading to the same place! While I hadn’t actually booked a hotel in Lilongwe (trusting to luck or word of mouth, as usual), Akpongo had a room booked at Kiboko Camp safari lodge on the outskirts of the city so, not only did we get chance for a final catch-up and natter but we were also able to split the cost of the accommodation…not a bad thing in the city, where our small room for two was twice the price of a whole chalet at Mayoka. It seemed Kiboko was a popular stop-off point for the Mayoka crowd as I saw several familiar faces milling about and even spent dinner with Katherine’s parents, brother and sister-in-law. Katherine’s parents had moved out to live in Malawi some years previously but I was reminded yet again of how small the world is when I learnt that Jim and his wife lived just outside Exeter, where I’d studied for 5 years. They were heading back to Devon the following day, flying from Lilongwe and I was slightly envious of the fact that they had no more roads to negotiate other than to get to the airport. I still needed to get to the southern lakeshore…and from there to Blantyre. The final leg of the journey was going to be a white-knuckle ride in the overnight bus and I knew I was going to be sick of Malawian minibuses by the time it was over.
Akpongo and I were both too knackered to stay up late yakking and we both had early starts in the morning anyway. She was heading to South Luangwa National Park, just over the border in Zambia for a 4-day safari and I was going on a gift-hunting mission.
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