March 19-20
Hello everyone!
March seems to be the time of year for school sports
competitions to be held in Malawi. Lilongwe doesn’t have too many international
schools, which often means our children travel down to the other large city of
Blantyre in order to participate in national tournaments. Hannah and I being
two of the sportier members of the teaching staff resulted in us being asked to
travel down to Malawi’s second city to help.
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| A view of Zomba from its eponymous plateau |
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| Blantyre's CBD |
Blantyre is a four to five hour drive southeast of Lilongwe
along Malawi’s main artery: the M1. It’s single lane throughout and used by all
sorts of vehicles, meaning it is an intense drive requiring full focus and one
which doesn’t allow you to often take in the spectacular scenery.
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| A rare motorway which people and cyclists freely use |
Known as the commercial capital of the country, waking up in
Blantyre on a Saturday morning also gave us the opportunity to access some of
Malawi’s jewels which are not possible to get to from Lilongwe over the course
of a weekend. We plan to visit Majete, Mulanje and Liwonde in the future but
all require more time to truly appreciate them.
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| So much to see in the south! |
The most accessible attraction from Blantyre is thus the
Zomba Plateau, situated high above Malawi’s previous capital city of the same
name. The capital was moved from Zomba to Lilongwe in 1975.
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| Southern Malawi, with Zomba Town in the foreground |
A windy, cliff-edged drive with a sheer drop on one side
will take you up from the town to the plateau. Some of the drops are over
1000m, which results in some stunning views.
Hiking is the main activity up here (not Zumba,
unfortunately), with the reward being some lovely views stretching across the
Shire Valley to Lake Malawi (to the north) and Mount Mulanje, Malawi’s highest
peak at 3,002 metres (to the southeast).
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| Hiking up through the thicket of the Zomba Plateau |
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| The blue either side of the dark rock is Lake Malawi |
We’re clearly not the only people who has sampled these
delightful views, as proven by the signs erected at Emperor’s View...
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| I'm glad he physically visited! |
...and nearby
Queen’s View.
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| Sounds better than Queen Mother's View... |
Whilst in this area of the plateau, we sampled some of the
local fruit grown high above the town. The plateau is known for gooseberries
and raspberries, of which we were able to acquire plenty of the former.
Delicious, too.
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| An internet picture of Zomba's gooseberries - we devoured ours before thinking about taking a photo of them |
We took a more direct route to get to the various
viewpoints, heading through long grass. We traipsed through this to reach the
Chagwa Dam, a pleasant spot. Our guide stated that it’s very deep.
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| Not the well-worn route |
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| Chagwa Dam |
The pleasant viewpoints are not just restricted to distant
horizons. The plateau has a couple of small waterfalls which gush and rush down
from the peaks of the plateau.
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| Mandala Falls, Zomba Plateau |
After a long afternoon hiking in the heat, it was a great
way to cool off, particularly as the shower in our campsite wasn’t working…
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| Hiking on Zomba Plateau |
We weren’t alone in the campsite, with white baboons
hurtling around the Trout Farm campsite.
Any plan to see more beautiful panoramas were scotched by a
downpour during the night and early morning the following day. This also meant
that the people selling buckets of vividly pink raspberries – who we’d driven
past the previous day, thinking that we would buy them all on the Sunday – were
understandably hiding in their homes rather than selling when very few people
were driving by. Or hiding in the mist! We managed to get plenty of granadillas, though: passion fruit
to you and me.
Rather than feasting on raspberries, we instead had
breakfast at Casa Rossa, a beautiful spot owned by an Italian couple. With a
lovely view
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| Casa Rossa: lovely spot with an amazing mozzarella and tomato omelette |
Zomba Plateau is a pretty little place which I imagine we
would visit fairly often if we lived in Blantyre. Beautiful flora and lovely hiking are just over an hour away from Malawi's second city. Very different to the vistas
of Nyika, the views across the Shire Valley are certainly worth your time.
Love you all
Matt
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