They say that the ride into Malawi is meant to be the best ride on
the trip.  I would have to agree.  I started my day climbing a hill
with Rana and Peter.  We decided to exchange life stories.  Rana went
first, and by the time I was telling mine, Peter had ridden ahead, so
he felt it was unfair that he had to tell his.  He wound up telling
us that he had grown up in Bruges and had a happy childhood.  He 's a
man of few words, unless he's had a bottle of wine.

The ATM in Mbeya didn't work for me, and so I spent the whole day on
the lookout for Tukuyu, which was meant to have one as well.  The big
issue is that Cirrus doesn't really work in most of Africa. If you're
coming here, bring a card that works on the Plus system.  It won't
work half the time either, but it's better than none of the time.  We
passed a small village and bought some Cokes from the store.  A man
passed  with a glass box filled with samosas on the back of his bike.
We almost cleaned him out.  I find it very hard to choke back the
breakfasts anymore.  I seriously dislike the peanut butter here, the
bread is crap, and there's no way I will ever eat oatmeal again.
Winge, winge, winge.  Having obviously not eaten enough, we got some
chapatis.  Life here is about food.

It turns out Tukuyu is a district with one main town, Tukuyu,
in it.  It took us a while to get there, and a while to
figure out why everyone would tell us that yes, this is Tukuyu.  When
we did get there, I quickly found out that the ATM wouldn't work for
me.  GAH.  I rode on past women dressed in kangas - colourful sheets
of material they use as a wrap, make headdresses out of, turn into
papooses for their babies, and have tailored into formal dresses.  The
style of dress is so much more put together than back home.  The cuts
come straight out of the 40's, and the colours are so vivid.

After lunch we had 1.7km of downhill over 40km.  We flowed through
tea plantations and banana trees, stepped hills with blue-tinged
mountains in the background, and Lake Malawi in the far distance.
With so much downhill it wasn't a sacrifice to stop and shoot tons of
pictures.

At the border we stopped for our last chips mahai and pops, crossed
over and were greeted by flat roads and kids by the millions.  They
were so much more aggressive than in Tanzania, asking us for money and
almost swarming us with their numbers.  A lot of riders  were freaked
out because it brought them back to Ethiopia.  Malawi is one of
Africa's poorest countries, and has a massive population density,
especially considering that half the country is covered by a lake.

When we got into camp it was completely surrounded by locals.  They
were everywhere - even up in the trees.  And they were loud.  In
Ethiopia they all stood around watching us silently, but here we could
barely hear ourselves speak over the noise.  Occasionally they would
dart in and steal things, so we had to keep everything locked into our
tents.  In the evening though, they opened up the vestibules and stole
a few pairs of shoes and some water bottles.  It's unfortunate,
because now the negative sentiments are starting to arise amongst the
cyclists again.

I had wonderful dreams that night, going to sleep to the soft sound of
rain  falling and the chorus of millions of frogs.

My ride into Chitimba beach was my best riding day on the tour.  I
started with Allan Ben - the fastest racer.  He was obviously riding
super-casually, but his casual is my fast, and we jetted past tons of
other riders - I made jokes the whole way about how I was just letting
him keep up with me.  We rode the 30km to where we needed to buy
groceries - there isn't much in Chitimba beach other than the lodge
and the service there is slow, so they wanted us to be sure that we
had food for snacks.  I checked  all seven of the ATMs in the
village.  None of them worked, so I changed of some of the last of my
American reserves.  It was funny, being in a little dirt-road village
that had it's own banking district with 7 different banks, all
surrounded by people with baskets on their heads, chickens and Chinese
bicycles.

I caught on to a train with Alastair, Frank and Craig and we rode
together to lunch.  The road was straight and pretty uninteresting,
and Craig and Frank took off pretty quickly afterwards.  Alastair and
I were more into coke stops and pictures, so while we kept the pace up
around 30km/h, we still meandered quite a bit.

We came over one rise and found ourselves looking at a fishing
village.  Rows and rows of grass and mud huts, dugout canoes by the
beach, and tables covered in tiny fish all drying in the sun.  The kids
came running at us, so after some pictures and greetings we took off.

Through the hills we went until we came into view of Table Mountain.
We rolled into the lodge at Chitimba beach - it was beautiful.  The
lake was so gorgeous that we all decided that we might as well just
pick up some anti-bilharzia meds and enjoy the lake.  In the evening
we sat around drinking and chatting with some of the overlanders.  The
guys were all stoked to chat up some ladies, and I had to laugh when I
heard Paul say to one of the women, a teacher, "You have THE most
important job in the world".  Apparently the line worked, as he
managed to convince her to cycle with us for a few days.

On our rest day I read by the beach, played volleyball, and did
laundry.  I prepped for the sojourn that Erin and I are going to take
onto Lake Malawi.  Unfortunately, since others have found out about
it, it seems they are getting the same idea.  We have one more riding
day until we head off to Nkhata Bay.
Very cool.