We stayed at 2 places on Lake Malawi, the second place, Chitimba was right by Mount John, a 15km hike up to a town called Livingstonia. We figured that this would be good training for Mt Kilimanjaro so went for the all day hike! we were completely unprepared for the toughness of the hike! very steep uphill most of the way, only a few places for breaks between the overgrowth, but the views when the breaks came were breathtaking. heres the group of us who did it, Elisa, Gav, YoungBin, Peter, Esther, Nick, Henriette, me and Wisdom our guide! the hike was really good, but it was so disheartening as we struggled up and children and adults ran up past us with water or some package on their heads, going up effortlessly - we realy are unfit compared to these people! at the top we saw a waterfall which provided a nice view during our drinks break! At the top it started to rain, then harder, then harder still until it was torential rain and we were soaked through and slipping all over the place in our hiking boots covered in wet clay! the locals in bare foot did a lot better job of walking along than we did! but it was all good fun. in the town we saw the schools, college and university, the markets, the town hall, some monuments, we went to a museum but for me it was too painful to take my shoes off to go inside! as we walked back down the mountain it started rain started to ease, and although painful going down at least by the bottom we were all dry again! it was funny how so many of us suddenly had bad ankles/knees/backs etc and the locals just took it all in their stride not understanding what we were talking about! Back at the campsite we all headed straight for the bar for a well deserved drink, I could barely walk the next few days which was just as well as we were stuck in the truck anyway!!

From Malawi we made our way across to Tanzania to the capital Dar Es Salaam (another quite scary city!) where we stayed ready for an early departure for Zanzibar the following day. The first day we were there we all decided what we wanted to do whilst there and kinda went about trying to arrange it. that evening we all got together to watch the sunset over the sea from the balcony of The Africa House bar, it was a really nice evening, chilled, relaxing and a great setting!

we all went to this fishmarket that is on everyday where the fisherman sell and cook up their fresh catches, we had lobster, sqid, tuna and octopus for about $8!! really nice! we tried zanzibar pizza too which is like a meaty omlette and sugar cane juice which was sickly but good! was a fun evening bartering with the locals to get some really nice food!we ate like kings!

The next day we went on a spice tour of the island, it started by giving us a history lesson on Zanzibar, pre and post the english ruling - why did we nearly mess up so many countries, makes you feel so bad when youre travelling around! we were taken to the old slave market and even to the holding cells of the people to be sold, these tiny rooms would hold over 100 people at a time, no wonder so many died of disease, there was only 11 of us in there and it felt over cramped. we learnt how Dr Livingstone was a huge driving force behind the abolishment of slavery (an englishman) and also how he brought vaccines over which saved many lives, hence why many places are named after him.

so being a spice tour we went to a few spice farms and saw the nutmeg tree, the cinnomen tree (all bark is cinnomen, all roots are menthol), we saw the lipstick tree which has a flower with seeds - if you burst the seeds it as a liquid red paste they use for dyes and lipstick, and its bloody hard to get off! whatelse? we saw ginger, lemongrass, pepper, vanilla, god I can't remember anymore! we tried a few things too, a range of teas, masala, lemongrass, ginger, some fruits: jackfruit, pineapple, avocado, all delicious! then we saw something really funky! a guy climbed a coconut tree to show us how they pick them! he climbed up with a bit of rope tied around his ankles and was up there in no time, swinging around! the coconuts weren't ripe so he cut down a few leaves and in the time it took our guide to list 15 uses of the coconut tree, the other guy had made a tie from the leaves! literally in seconds! they really are so resourceful! nice one peter!