Sunday, July 29, 2007

Vacation vacation....

Hello everybody.

I am fresh off of a week spent on the shores of beautiful beautiful lake malawi. The transport was a hassle, and through an obvious bias i feel that the average Zambian is more friendly than the average Malawian, but once I arrived at Myoka Village (not a village but a resort right on the shore of the lake) I had an amazingly wonderful time. I think that I will provide bulleted highlights of the trip, just because i feel like i won't remember to mention everything otherwise.

* I got horrifically sick the first night due to severe dehydration the day of traveling. I woke up in the middle of the night with a bad fever, body aches, headache, and a little delirious. But the nice thing about dehydration is that it is easy to cure. several bottles of water and a few hours later, i was feeling much much better. I was still kinda out of it the first day though, but it wasn't a big deal.

* Good beer. You can find two types of beer in zambia, and neither are anything to write home about (hence I haven't mentioned them before) but this place had a wide selection of really good beers for about half the price of either of the beers in zambia.

* The lake was absolutely amazing, even though i probably have schistosomaisis now. The water was perfect temperature and clear and blue and you could see the bottom long after you ceased being able to touch it.

* I spent a good amount of time trying to master the art of traveling in a dugout canoe. You sit on top of a hollowed log, a cross section of which would look kinda like your tongue if you brought the sides together, and do your best not to fall off. This is considerably more difficult than in sounds, b/c due to the circular nature of the log, the vessel itself doesn't help you at all with balancing. You shift a little too much to one side and you are finished. The really amazing part of this is how good the locals are. They stand on it, dive off of it and hop back on without blinking. Every day, one of the employees at the lodge took one of these canoes across our little bay to town to pick up crates of sodas and beer, balanced them in the little crack in the top of the canoe and brought them back, not even stopping to think that if he lost his balance he would dump several hundred dollars worth of supplies into lake malawi. it was wild. The picture i am about to put up is me on of the canoes...

* we took a little boat ride along the coast of the lake for a while and the two main highlights of the ride were jumping off of a 30-40ft rock into the lake (i seem to have lost a lot of my sense of immortality since i have turned 24... its too bad really... i only jumped once) and getting to see a fishing eagle up close. The people who ran the boat trip (we were in a skiff-life boat with and outboard motor so it wasn't very large) would throw fish speared on little shafts of bamboo into the lake and the eagle would swoop down out of the tree on the cliff on the shore and sweep past us and grab the fish. It was an amazing site. The bird is just so huge. He always attacked the fish at a certain angle (which is due to the position of his eyes in his head, this angle allows him to approach the fish at the highest possible speed without ever having to move his head to either side or lose sight of the fish) and once that angle took him so close to our boat that i could have dived off the side and shook his talon.... it was unbelievable.

* the sunsets and sunrises over the lake were amazing. I took some pictures, but i need to develop them to see if any turned out alright.

* i was with a really good group of people and i really enjoyed it. The staff was very friendly (they were great at their job. they made you feel welcome and like their best friend after only 1 day, and they do it with every guest... i hope they get paid a ton) and they would dance (on the bar) with us and play games with us and built a bonfire with us and it was an amazing amazing time.

Welll..... that's about it for my malawi trip. I am heading to southern province really shortly, and tomorrow I pick up sara!!!!! woohoo!

all my best, take care.