Farewell to Malawi and Zambia

"This is the worst road we've been on in Africa!"

Given that my eyeballs, teeth and cojones were rattling in synch with the Landrover, I wasn't about to argue with Angela. We were on a 17 kilometre stretch of gravel interspersed with potholes and gullies that passed as the road to Cape Maclear, Lake Malawi National Park.

Despite driving in diff lock and second gear, we fishtailed, bounced and rattled all the way to Chembe Eagles Nest lodge and a stunning beachside campsite that, for the first time in Malawi, might have allowed us to see the sunset over the Lake, except for the fact that it was cloudy for the 2 nights we stayed there!

The waters surrounding the nearby island of Thumbi are home to a myriad of cichlid fish species, over 800 apparently, which are probably familiar to anyone with a freshwater tropical fish tank. We hired a local fishing boat for 3 hours and snorkelled, startled by the colour and variety of the cichlids. To put it in perspective the lake has more species of freshwater fish than Europe and North America put together. The future of Lake Malawi's cichlids is sadly uncertain, judging by the number of fishing boats working this "protected" area (often using charity donated mosquito nets!)

After another bone jarring return trip down the road from hell our final Malawi destination was Liwonde National Park, some 180 kilometres south of the Lake. The only river to drain out of the Lake, the Shire, forms the western boundary of this park. Despite being small by African standards this park has a stunning riverine setting, think Chobe without the visitors! Hippo are abundant, elephant are increasing in numbers and the crocodiles are huge.

At the main entrance gate near Liwonde town we received the friendliest greeting from a park employee that we've encountered in our 5 years of African travel. Benson (without the Hedges as he was quick to point out) was an absolute treasure, friendly, helpful, courteous and funny. If only the Botswana Parks service had one person half as pleasant as Benson!

Birders, or anyone with a passing interest in birds, should visit this park. The sunset river cruise from Mvuu Lodge was one of the highlights of our month in Malawi. Unlike the Chobe River, we were the only boat and soon ticked off 6 "firsts" including Palm Nut vultures, Spurwing lapwing and the stunningly beautiful Lillian's Lovebirds. From our boat, manned by the impressively knowledgeable Angel, we watched, open mouthed, as a Dikkop (a bird in case you are wondering) protected its water's edge territory from a 2.5 metre crocodile intent on returning to the river.

With much reluctance we left Liwonde and headed the car back towards the Zambian border. Stopping in the capital, Lilongwe, to re-fuel, we encountered a slight problem, there was no fuel! Lack of foreign currency reserves results in periodic shortages and we'd encountered one of those periods! It was just a matter of waiting two days then we were off again to Zambia.

Despite occasional fuel shortages Malawi is well worth a visit, charming people, lovely parks and a lovely lake, we'll be back!

Zambia, a country that we've since found out is the size of France, takes time and an expensive amount of fuel to cross. After 600 kilometres and 9 hours on the road we rested over in the capital Lusaka again, if only to give our wallets a break and to indulge in a few too many portions of the best cooked fresh chips in Southern Africa (with the exception of Chez Hamiltons, Joburg).

One oddity about Zambia is the obsession with speed humps (or hamps as half the road signs quaintly spell them) when you get to towns and villages. We've nothing against speed humps but these ones were often unmarked and the only indication of their presence is when you think the front axle of the Landrover has just detached itself from the chassis.

Apart from the humps, the road camber in Zambia, particularly between Lusaka and Livingstone, meant that pulling over for a call of nature (a regular request from my passenger, who I will label Mrs A to protect her identity) was a nervy experience. It was a fine balance between going slow enough to avoid rolling the vehicle, and fast enough to ensure that the inevitable truck that materialised behind didn't shunt us in to the next life.

The car continued to perform well, apart from not firing on all cylinders, but in that sense she was keeping Angela company. Somewhere on the trip the car had decided to improvise and produce cold water ponds in both foot wells. This was initially very welcome given an external temperature of 40C but water leaks in our Landrover 1800 kilometres short of a South African breakdown recovery service was not good for Mrs A's aforementioned bowels, and not that good for our feet, which were beginning to get slightly pickled.

Deciding it was all to do with the "latent heat of evaporation" (the only thing I can remember from my geography A level at school and unsurprisingly an explanation for most mechanical and meteorological phenomena I've encountered since) I removed the rubber floor mats and, predictably, the carpets remained soaking wet.Foleys Landrover in Livingstone decided it was leaking drain pipes for the aircon condensate and re-attached them, which made no difference!

At this point I could do a "Ralphie's Rant" about the design of the Discovery 2. Apparently Landrover were so embarrassed about how little money they spent designing the Discovery model prior to launch that they exaggerated the expenditure! Next time we are back in the UK I would like to chat to someone on that original team, assuming I can get visiting rights to the Solihull Asylum for the Criminally Stupid.

I'd just like to ask why they decided to pipe the aircon condensate water (from the aircon/heater matrix conveniently hidden between the engine and the car body) back in to the foot wells of the car for 8 inches either side of the drive shaft then out of the foot wells to drain to the road below. The key phrase here is "drain to the road below". Add 5 years of sand, gravel, mud, buffalo s*** and Okavango swamp to the drain hole and the more accurate phrase becomes "drain to the foot wells above"

Come to think of it there are many questions I'd like to ask that design team, like why a vehicle designed for off road use lets in more dust and sand than a Go Kart, like why the engine is too big for the engine compartment, like why they didn't just skip the Disco 2 and go straight to the Disco 4.

Anyway as this isn't a rant I won't mention the subject again, except to say that the aircon drain pipes have now been "rodded", (something I hope to do to members of that design team when I get to Solihull) and about a litre of water an hour drips on to the road rather than our carpets.

Where was I? Oh yes, driving the swamp buggy to Livingstone for a bit of repair work. Actually, to be fair to the beast, a quick inspection elicited no mechanical issues of note, no mean feat after 8000 kilometres of often atrocious roads.

Now, 4x4 magazines in South Africa will talk at length about the importance of trip planning, equipment preparation and destination research. After a couple of chats with people we met coming north we decided we had to go back to Zimbabwe. Our bravado was no doubt helped by the numbing effects of Livingstone's ZigZag café mega breakfast, a generous spread of bacon, tomato, sausage, 2 eggs, mega fries and toast that makes you feel like lion wrestling afterwards.

On our last night in Livingstone we had another close encounter with a hippo. This one, a very large adult bull, came charging by our camp at Maramba River Lodge as we sat chewing on the remains of our single lamb chop (meat is expensive in Zambia!) It (the hippo, not the lamb chop) was closely followed by two security guards who, clearly keen to get themselves a Darwin Awards nomination, were chasing the hippo armed with sticks (the guards had the sticks, not the hippo by the way).

The whole event was over on 15 seconds and we spent the rest of our last night in Zambia wondering if it had really happened!

Next stop, Uncle Bob's socialist paradise…..Zimbabwe