Beach Life (again!)

With the end of my trip fast-approaching, I’d arrived in Nkhata Bay intent on enjoying my last vestiges of freedom before heading home. As far as I was concerned, this involved taking things as easily as possible, drinking copious quantities of Kuche in the evenings and lazing around in the sun all day. A slight variation in this very pleasing routine would involve ambling around the hillside to Big Blue, the neighbouring resort, to watch a DVD on Chris’s X-Box. During my short time at Mayoka, I’d become quite friendly with the chef, Jan and it was through him that I’d met Chris, the manager of Big Blue. Unfortunately, the downside of hanging out with the boys during the day (as opposed to the sensible girls) was that there was no watershed for the consumption of beer and it thus became an all-day activity to compete with sunbathing.
Monday and Tuesday disappeared without trace (much as many days had in previous stints on the beach) and if it weren’t for the impending task of creating banoffee pie (now for 30 people!!), I’m sure all of Wednesday would have followed suit. Before rousing myself to this great feat, I managed to do something constructive with the day, though: sunburn! With a shiny, glowing head and producing enough heat to use myself as a stove, I boldly ventured into the kitchen to investigate the facilities. These were, unsurprisingly, basic but banoffee pie is not the most difficult recipe in the world and I was soon beavering away at it with gusto.
Suffice to say, the pie went down well – with locals and tourists alike – and I firmly cemented my friendship with Anniek and Linda, who as Dutch girls (a notoriously sweet-toothed nation) had suffered for a lack of dessert in the restaurants of Mzuzu. As is often the case when travelling, we’d only known each other for a short time but developed an unusually strong bond. Although I’d met yet more sound people that evening (Mateo, Claire and Marie…more of whom later), I’d determined that I would take a break from Mayoka when they left so as to feel their absence a little less keenly. When they headed back to Mzuzu in the morning, I’d be joining them in order to get to Vwaza Marsh. Not only was this a place I’d been wanting to see but I was becoming aware of the need to take a break from the constant partying at Mayoka. Vwaza is billed as the most untouched and peaceful of Malawi’s game reserves and I could think of no better place to recharge my batteries before one final blast in ‘The Village’.