We left Vic Falls thankful that we made it out alive and boarded an incredible bus that had DVD players with about 10 movie channels on demand in the back of the seats and an attendant dishing out soft drinks and cookies on a bus……in Africa! It was wonderful. The driver operated like a pilot, updating us on our journeys progress. A novel moment was a prayer being said for our safety on loudspeaker at the start of our journey which I admit made me feel a little more confident as although the bus was nice, car accidents occur ALL the time in Africa. Even when I lived in Cape Town, everyone knows at least 3-5 people that have died in car accidents.

We arrived alive in Lusaka and Mom had "adopted" a Peace Corps volunteer, Janice, and a Japanese traveller, Kyoko, who had been travelling a year and a half around the world. Even though these travellers were competent, Mom felt it her duty to look after lone female travellers and I know I've met plenty of people like her along the way and I have always been grateful. Our stay was short again, 5 hours, enough for a kip and off to the bus station at 4am to embark on a 14 hour journey to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. It took over an hour sitting at the bus station at 5am for the bus to fill with passengers and their cargo. It was unbelievable what some people were carrying. We would stop 6 hours out of the city in the middle of nowhere and a single mattress would come rolling down the aisle, then a double, then a windscreen, then speakers and an array of people and suitcases. The back of the bus was like the bottom of Mary Poppins' bag, a bottomless pit of random items.

After getting a shared taxi to the border from Chipata in Zambia, we encountered our first proper African border crossing which are never places you want to hang around for long. As soon as the car pulled up to the immigration office our car was surrounded by about 20 aggressive money changers shouting at us. Sarah pulled some reverse psychology and started screaming in their faces and pretended she was crazy. It really worked! Well everyone thought she was drunk and backed off. We finally arrived after 15 hours of travelling in the small but chaotic capital city of Lilongwe, checked into our hostel and met up with three other travellers who we had met along the way. Mom being the patron mother of the backpackers offered to take us all out for dinner which was lovely. We had Janice, the peace corps volunteer who had lived in Namibia for 2 years, Kiyoko who was on her fourth continent and Alex who was motorcycling from Cape Town to Camden Town. We ate dinner at little Italian place called Don Birioni's. The 70 something year old owner, "The Don" sat at the bar getting drunk with his elderly expat friends, eyeing up every young girl that walked past and did his rounds making sure each party were having a nice meal. We had a lovely dinner and a little too much wine considering we all had 12 hours of more travelling in the morning.

By this time all we wanted to do was relax. We were told there was an express bus to Mzuzu, a 5 hour trip north en route to Nkhata Bay, a lakeside paradise on the shore of Lake Malawi. The express bus turned out to be full so we made our way to the bus station and sat for 2 hours in the station watching the usual events as bus drivers packed as many people in the aisles and cargo as was possible. Finally we started playing the inching game where the bus would start up and move forward a meter, stop for 15 minutes then move another meter towards the exit 15 minutes later! Suddenly, the passengers on the bus stood up abruptly, shouting, grabbed their belongings and poured out of the bus. We were told in the chaos the bus was not going and we had to change buses. The next 15 minutes were a blur of pushing and shoving as 60 people forced their way onto a smaller bus. I tried to push my way into the bus but was pushed back into a black puddle and crashed into a women carrying a baby and all her luggage on her head. I gave up, thinking it was a lost cause. The next thing I know Sarah gets her war face on, her Chinese elbows out and powers her way through the 40 odd people trying to squeeze through a 1 meter wide bus door. Sure enough at the back of the bus, Sarah is defending three seats, a limb on each one while frantically calling us to get to the seats! Hurrah! The journey took 6 hours and standing would have been horrendous.

We met some lovely people who shared their food with us and helped us buy food from the bus windows as vendors ran alongside as the bus slowed down through villages. They were selling everything from apples, samosas, mobile phone credit to whole roasted mice on skewers! We arrived in Mzuzu at night. We'd been adopted by a woman called Jamima who was sitting next to us on the bus and said she would help us find a taxi. Like usual we had 10 men fighting for our business. We were in the middle trying to calm them down when Jamima took us to one side and walked away to find another taxi. Sure enough, we found another driver and looked back and the group of 10 men were still arguing, oblivious that we had even left! We also had in tow a 10 year old boy who had travelled from a village to visit his grandparents 12 hours away from home. He was going to wait in the bus station all night until first light when he was to walk 5 miles home. Mom was aghast that this boy was alone, found out his story from Jamima and told the boy that we would take him home. So Jamima and Junior, the boy in tow all got into the taxi to drop the boy off at his home and then we made our way finally arriving at Nkhata Bay about 10pm. We said our good-byes and thanked Jamima for helping us, she really was our like our guardian angel, and we finally began to relax.

I had wanted to visit Nkhata Bay for years, ever since I met Chris, my first boyfriend, who would stay at the Moyoka Village, in Nkhata Bay during his summer breaks before I met him. He described it as one of the most amazing places he had been to and I always wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Sure enough, a week at Moyoka Village confirmed that yes, Nkhata Bay is one of the most magical places I have ever visited. The days just morphed into one. The backpackers itself is a honeypot to interesting people travelling in Africa. You can spend the whole day watching the lake, spending hour's jibber-jbbering away with whoever sits down and by the end of the day you feel like you've known that person for months. Among many, I met two Israeli doctors who offered me a place to stay in Tel Aviv, an unlikely girly holiday of Irish girls backpacking through Africa, a Malawian who lived down the road from me in Brixton and an American couple in their 60s who were spending their retirement backpacking! Nights were spent partying with an array of colourful characters going by names such as Happy Coconut and Cheese on Toast. Dinner is served at 7:30, everyone sits round communal tables and by the end of the week the people we had met had become one big happy family. The place itself is incredible value for money, they offer free snorkel gear, free pool, free boats, free kayaks, free tea and cakes, free internet, free natural loofas! and a free boat trip on Tuesdays so see the different beaches! I've never encountered anywhere where people are just satisfied with what they have and aren't ripping tourists off for more.

Even though I spent the entire week at Mayoka which was a backpackers catering for tourists, it was not the usual them and us vibe that hotels in poor areas generally have. A whole array of local characters would frequent the place just to hang out and chat with the backpackers. It also provided a safe haven for women who would play pool, sit around smoking and drinking with friends and chat to other tourists. It sounds like a place that could attract a lot of sex tourism but it really wasn't like that. The locals didn't want to sell anything and just wanted to hang out. Apart from a few countries, notably Ghana and Colombia, I have never met such genuine people. Day times were spent kayaking and swimming in the crystal clear warm waters and the nights were spent partying away with the locals and other backpackers in either the Mayoka which had music playing till 6am or a very dodgy looking establishment in town called Yizo Yizo. Although the day light hours were exceptionally chilled out, once the sun went down, some nights descended into madness. But again, never in a threatening, creepy or scary way at any time.

I met Gary, the owner who was from the same town where I lived outside Cape Town. He was back from Lilongwe for one night and was totally plastered by 7pm. He declared the bar open so the whole night was a free for all! He would go behind the bar, open a bottle of spirits, pass it around the bar, so everyone could have swig and then when that bottle was finished he would immediately fetch another bottle! This went on every 15 minutes throughout the night until about 3am when he fell down 10 meters onto the rocks. Luckily there were a group of medical students who were partying away, they immediately sobered up and thought the worse. They helped Gary up and miraculously he got away with only a couple scratches and ordered everyone to keep partying! However, it was clear that he needed looking after. Suddenly a fight broke out between two locals, Gift and Owen, over who was to look after Gary as they each wanted to take care of him! Shirts were ripped off and a proper fisty-cuff fight broke out while Gary lay on the sofa dazed and confused! Luckily Katherine, his wife, was called who saved the day and restored order. We never saw Gary again as I think he was banished from his own backpackers for the foreseeable future, but it was an epic night.