Saturday, November 21st - Lilongwe to Salima, Malawi

This morning was to be another morning to sleep in but I didn't.  The neighbour had his TV or radio blaring about 4 a.m. and by 5 a.m. it was so loud I could clearly hear every word.  I was not impressed, especially after I had been awake half the night ensuring some of my pictures were uploading to Google Drive.  It was a slow process but I did manage to get a few uploaded and then deleted from my iPad so I can move more pictures from my camera to the iPad.

Our first stop in Salima was a fish farm and I thought they were raising and releasing fish into Lake Malawi and that's what we were going to see.  However, they take little fish from all parts of Lake Malawi - very tiny to maybe 6 inches in size - and sell them for fish tanks around the world.  Some were a bright florescent blue in the sunlight but most of the other colours were not so spectacular.  There were orange, yellow, black, white and blue shades and of course with all kinds of stripes and neat designs but nothing fancy like angel fish or other tropical ones you see in fish tanks.  These were just more the normal gold fish variety.  There are six dive teams in the lake and the fish arrive every week.  They then get quarantined / disinfected for a period of three days and most are gone within a week.  And there were thousands of them.  There were indoor glass tanks and concrete tanks and there were outdoor concrete tanks so it took quite a while to get through the whole place.  The young guy doing the talk obviously liked his job and knew his fish but we really weren't all that interested in their official names.  We were more interested in just getting out of the heat and back into the shade or a moving car with a breeze to cool us off.

Our next stop just a few kilometres away was a crocodile farm.  Again it wasn't quite what we were expecting, which was a few rescued or injured crocodiles.  This place actually farms crocodiles.  They raise them to sell for their skin and for meat.  They have over 20,000 of them (they don't actually know how many) in various enclosures according to age, including 3,000 babies in one enclosure.   It was a hot day and they were just packed together in the shady spots or in the water in each enclosure.  It was sad to see so many together but our guide kept telling us it was fine.  When we asked how they moved them from one enclosure to the next as they got bigger, she just said they shock them until they faint and then move them.  It took us a while to realize that "shock them" meant electrical shock.  We weren't too impressed with that part either.  Some of the enclosures have the large crocs with one male and several females.  As soon as the females lay their eggs, the staff go in and steal them away and put them in another spot.  Each female lays 70-80 eggs so they obviously have several females to get up to the 3,000 babies.  They have their own facilities to slaughter, skin and cut the meat.  We didn't visit that part of the facility.  Although it was nice to see so many crocs up close - and we were really close - overall it was a pretty disgusting place and we were happy to leave.

Our next stop was our last one at the lodge we would be staying at for two nights.  It looked great and we could see we were right on the lake so we were impressed.  Going to our room was a big of a challenge - at least for me.  It was the farthest chalet and up a lot of uneven stairs going up the hillside above the lake.  The view was spectacular when we got there and the place was large enough to sleep six so we had lots of room.  Our patio was very large and had two comfortable chairs and a table.  There was a double bed up in the loft and four single beds on the main floor.  The loft woud have been a nice alternative for one of us but the stairs were so seep and rickety that neither of us wanted to risk them on a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  So the two of us slept downstairs but still quite separate because of all the space.  And we each had another single bed to pile our suitcases and junk on.  

We opened up our windows and put down the mosquito nets before we went for lunch.  There were a number of salamanders or whatever they are called in Malawo around the room but they seemed pretty harmless and we hoped they were taking care of any bugs that might enter.  Then we went down to lunch and both had wonderful pasta dishes - mine with chicken and Lynn's with vegetables and I have to say that her vegetables looked fantastic.  It was a very relaxing lunch and the best part was that we were on our own to enjoy the place for the rest of the day and all day Sunday before continuing our journey on Monday morning.

By the time we finished lunch it was going on 4 p.m. so we went for a walk along the beach.  The water is so warm it is amazing.  You don't feel a temperature change at all when you walk into the water and the air temperature is probably in the high 30's.  We went in for one dip at the far end of our walk.  It was refreshing but not in the same way as a cooler lake would be.

There were many fishermen and boats along the shore.  This is obviously a major fishing centre for the local village which is just beyond the resort.  There are a couple of old small motor boats around but most of the boats are hollowed out wooden canoes that someone must paddle.  These canoes are very unique and much like native Canadian dugout canoes.  They are just a tree trunk with the inside hollowed out.  The difference is that these canoes have only a narrow opening at the top, unlike the Canadian version which  has a larger hole at the top.  The idea with these is that the person sits on top of the boat and just puts his feet into the hole.  And as fish are caught, they too go into the hole.  

We passed some fishermen cleaning their fish.  A lot of them were catfish, including one huge one that was 3-4 feet in length.  The locals cut the fish into sections and throw them on the sand and gut them right on the beach, which wasn't too thrilling but it works for them so what can you do. There were some locals out swimming as well but not very many for the size of the beach and the fact that it was a hot Saturday afternoon.  No other white folks appeared during our walk.  

We got back to the resort and sat in a swing seat for a while as the sun started to go behind the nearby hill.  Then we decided we should go up before it got too dark because we didn't have our flashlights with us.  We walked up the stairs to the reception/restaurant area and then on up more stairs to our room.  We are right at the end of the complex so it is quite a hike to get there.  We changed and then went down to dinner.  We had ordered chombo, rice and vegetables and it was fantastic.  We could have had a whole chombo but we decided we'd go for a fillet instead and that was definitely the right choice.  

At some point in the evening the power went out but the generator kicked in pretty soon.  The only problem with that was that they only had a single line running off the generator and that line didn't reach as far as our chalet.  So after dinner we made it to our chalet okay but found it very dark and hot when we got there.  We turned on the fan and tried to air the place out while we sat on the deck where there was a beautiful breeze blowing.  Eventually however, we did have to go back inside to our beds and it was a very, very hot night - hot and muggy so you were always sweating.  It was not nice temperature wise but we did eventually get to sleep, and we did so to the sound of the waves lapping on shore and the wind blowing through the trees.