Day 13: Cape Maclear

A sunlounger and a book. That was basically our day.

There aren't many tourists around in Cape Maclear and each lodge only seems to have four to six rooms, but you can tell that we are in tourist central Malawi style. As we went to bed last night there was a disco blaring, but I luckily managed to drop off without too many problems waking around 6am.

We headed for breakfast around 9am and I was served a huge pot of tea that took me over an hour to drink. Ed and I both read our books until gone midday, only rising to look at the view or to change between the sun lounger and hammock.

It was a blissfully relaxing morning. The most energetic thing I did was to text Becks.

Building works in Cape Maclear

We raised ourselves for a walk around 12:30. We headed west through the town and I was amazed how many curio sellers there were compared with the number of tourists in town.  Thankfully we didn't get too badly hassled. There are more persistent touts on the beach, but the lodges seem to have it quite well organised and non of the touts come onto the properties.

Hitting the western end of town and not finding an internet café we turned round and headed to the Fat Monkeys, the most easterly lodge in the village. We were hoping to find a wifi connection and to get a drink. We mananged to get a drink.

Sunset over Lake Malawi

While we were having lunch we got chatting to a 23 year old English guy from High Wycombe. He has been travelling for the last sixteen months and has another eight months to go before arriving back in the UK. He started by driving the length of the Americas on a motorbike and is now cycling from South Africa to Trafalgar Square. While we were talking I worked out he was the guy that we saw on the day we travelled from South Luangwa to Blantyr.

Around 3pm we walked back up the beach to our lodge to read and lie on the sun loungers. It was a hard day.

Washing clothes by the lake shore

We stopped reading around 5pm to take in the amazing sunset over Lake Malawi. There were kids playing on the beach, locals crowding round a fishing boat that has just come ashore and a sky that was slowly turning red. We drank beer and took photos of the sun setting.

After the sun had set we walked up the beach to a restaurant called Banapaya. There was a powercut in the village, the first we'd experienced during our trip, and the restaurant was lit by candles. For most of our time in the restaurant we were the only customer and the food took an hour to arrive (which seems to be about usual). The staff seemed genuinely pleased to see us and wanted to make sure we were happy which was nice.

After dinner we walked back down to our lodge, had a final beer and turned into bed at 9:15pm.

It was the most fantastically relaxing day, with gorgeous views as a back drop. You couldn't really ask for more.