A Day in the Life

Angela writes:

I decided to write a blog post that simply describes things that happen to us in one day since we might often forget to describe the little things of our adventure.

Today I woke up voluntarily just after 5 am to watch the sunrise over Lake Malawi.  I walked past the sand pit where we had had our camp fire last night and had polished off a couple cold Carlsberg beer (price $1.50 each).  This morning I sat down in the cool white sand on the beach and swatted away a few stray mosquitoes that would soon disappear after the sun appeared.  I watched the black and orange sky subtlety change  moment by moment until it became blue again.  Watching the sunrise always brings a good start to a day.



Afterwards I climbed back into our tent to begin the day’s gentle and unhurried routine of packing up my sleep mat, sleeping bag and sleep sheet. Then I got dressed into my bike t-shirt and shorts that I wear under my motorcycle gear.  I slipped on my motorcycle pants, socks and motorcycle boots (after dumping them upside down to make sure that creatures hadn’t found their way into my boots during the night) and moved my other things close to the door of the tent so that they would be easy to grab and pack later. The other items in my tent include my ipod, head flashlight, travel alarm clock, bag of clothes and my motorcycle helmet.  I used to keep my motorcycle helmet outside our tent in the “vestibule” but once I got up to find that a spider had spun a web inside of it and the spider was still in it!  Dom kindly removed the evidence of the creature before I freaked out! I have also found a gecko in my helmet previously so now I’ve decided that only my head should ever go in there and keep it safely in the tent. 

After our breakfast of oatmeal with chocolate milk powder, coffee and rusks (hard, sweet bread thing kind of like a scone), we packed up our camping dishes, stove, and the rest of our belongings on to our bike.  Packing our bike is not difficult at all any more (except when trying to find spaces for food after a trip to the grocery store) as everything has it’s place on the bikes. We leave our waterfront campsite just after 7 am and we are glad to do much of our riding in the morning to beat the heat of the day.  I ride my bike to the beginning of the campground and then Daryll gets on it to bring it through the 10 feet of deep sand that for some reason has been dumped in front of the gate.  Security opens the door for us and we ride out and up a dirt/gravelly path for a couple of kilometers before reaching the main paved road that will take us to our next destinations along Lake Malawi. 

During the day’s ride we stop every hour or so for a break. It’s nice to stand up after sitting on the bike for so long.  We drink some water, eat some peanuts and grab our cameras for any photo opportunities that come up during the break.  On this morning’s ride we met a local guy who was riding his bicycle by us and stopped to talk.  Dom decided to take a photo of this guy with Daryll and then Dom printed out a copy of the picture on his travel photo printer – a Polaroid Pogo (I need to get one of these) and gave the photo to the guy.  The guy was super excited about being able to keep this little memento and photo of himself and was Praising Jesus!



Once or twice a day, depending on how long our ride is that day,  we have to stop at a gas station to fill up our tanks and lately we’ve been having to specify to the attendants that we need  unleaded fuel.  Today we only rode for 207 km but when we stopped for gas in our destination town we discovered that the power was out and that they could not pump fuel for us.  Oh well, we are here in Nkhata Bay for 2 days so I’m sure in that time the power will come back on and we will get fuel on the day we leave.  We are camping at a hostel on Lake Malawi and the cool breeze off the lake is lovely.  I would love to go swimming in the clear, blue water but apparently there is a parasite in the water called Bilharzia. From all the bathing and laundry I’ve seen being done in this lake over the last few days I am going to play it safe and avoid swimming – go ahead call me conservative.