Yet another town by the name of the famous African explorer, David Livingstone. I have yet to figure out if he deserves all these places named after him, or if his legacy needs to be revisited. The first white person to explore many parts of Africa, some say he was committed to ending slavery, while others say he was only interested in expanding other business areas, in another form of exploitation.
Regardless, I was heading to Livingstonia, in the mountains of Malawi. After a surprisingly comfortable, quick and easy shared taxi ride from Nkhata Bay, I hit up an atm in Mzuzu and managed to pop into the grocery store for peanut butter and apples (supplies hard to find, as they are from South Africa) before my next minibus left. After shopping I didn’t have to wait long (thanks to the taxi driver for finding me an almost full bus) before we set off rather quickly north towards the Tanzania border, where I would be going in a few days. For now, I exited after a very uncomfortable ride through gorgeous winding scenery, at Chitimba, where I had the option to either pay about $6 CAD and wait up to 3 hours for a shared pick up truck, or jump on a motorbike right away for $10, for the 15km to Livingstonia. I opted for the latter.
My guidebook had described the way up to Livingstonia as a dirt road, but really, it was mostly large rocks poking out of what was a dirt road, with other portions what used to be paved. Kind of descriptive of a lot of the Africa I have seen so far, paved in parts with good intentions, only to have remained unfinished, and slowly deteriorating, forgotten and neglected. When I felt we must have been driving for 15 km, my driver assured me we were almost halfway now! He was certainly earning the $10 fare.
Finally, we pulled into Mushroom farms, where for $5 a night I could camp on the edge of a gorgeous view, worth the effort of the climb. And it only took 6 hours from Nkhata Bay. This was a miracle for Malawi minibus trips.
Seeing a coffee roastery on site, I decided to risk ordering a coffee. The coffee so far has, like the roads, been made with good intentions, in the form of a french press, but exasperatingly weak. Amazingly, this coffee proved the exception. Guess I was back on coffee for a few days!
I wiled away the rest of the afternoon with an early dinner of perhaps the best salad I’ve had since South Africa (all vegetables grown on the premise) and a fantastic egg sandwich with homemade bread, and of course, reading. After being very social on Likoma and Nkhata, I was ready for an early night and the cooler mountain temperatures helped considerably. I signed up for a hike the next day and went to bed dreaming of fresh food and coffee.
I had only planned on staying a couple of days in Livingstonia, but five days later, I was still there! I woke up each morning at 5am to the sounds of birds, opened my tent door to look at the stunning sunrise, went back to sleep til 6:30am, and read and drank coffee til about 9am, when I went on a hike to waterfalls, plateaus and the town of Livingstonia itself. After a few days, the Spanish girls who were also on Likoma Island and Nkhata Bay arrived, as did an Israeli girl I had seen in Nkhata, so the five of us made dinner on my last night over the coals I had bought to cook on. It was a great way to end my time in Livingstonia.
