The Peponi Beach Resort is in an idyllic setting, quiet and secluded and a really wonderful spot. We learned that its for sale for 1.5 million Euros if anyone is interested.

After 4 days we went back to Dar to stock up for the journey through the very primitive hinterland and into Malawi. First stop was right up in the mountains, and we stopped in a hotel (euphemism) car park. They let us shower etc in an empty room, and then managed to sell the room to someone else, thus causing a Brian Rix type farce as 2 families tried to work out who was in who’s room.

The journey there was good however as we had to go through a Game Park and we didn’t even have to pay an entrance fee. This makes watching animals much more pleasant and Janet got her share of Dik diks for the day.

Next day an easy drive even higher up the mountains and the Camp was by a River with, it was said, Hippos on the other bank. We never saw them though and it was so cold we sat inside the van and watched The Simpsons Movie.

Our next camp was much more sophisticated though with high quality cuisine and very cold beer. The Old Farmhouse in Iringa is famous as an overlanders stop, and we got on well with the manager whom I christened Basil Fawlty. He loved the image and was as rude as possible to us until without a word he suddenly disappeared along with all the waiters. Our dessert was delayed by over and hour as we learned all the staff were fighting a bush fire which was approaching the camp with alarming rapidity. They dug fire breaks to halt its path and when they told us we had missed death by immolation by around 20 minutes I forgave Basil for my cold steamed pudding.

We were then warned that the bush fire had driven all the snakes towards the camp so could we take great care returning to our beds.

All the action made us quite forget about the cold.

The other memorable thing about the camp was that we met 2 Kiwi pensioners who are driving a van like ours. Our journeys kind of mirrored each other.  They had shipped from Australia to India and came to Africa that way. They also could not work a GPS, and felt a Porta Potti was the most important piece of equipment they had on board. When we asked if they, like us, had brought any useless items with them, we were astounded to learn that they had brought an inflatable Rubber Dinghy. Surprisingly they had yet to find an opportunity to use it, although I imagine that they will go over the top of the Victoria Falls in it and Janet and I will feel really small. Thanks to Gary and Joan for proving there are dizzy people in   the Antipodes as well as in England.

Our final night in Tanzania was spent at an up market hotel with a helicopter pad. We are in a place called Mbeya and the place is a working Coffee Plantation which takes in high quality guests. The food is superb, and as well as knowing

the life cycle of a coffee bean from bush to cup, we also found ourselves in the land of meteorites and of dinosaur bones. The river next to the camp is full of paleantologists who find the site incredibly rich in fossils, but we saw nothing or certainly did not recognise anything we saw as being remotely exciting.

We did catch the Second Test. It seems like sods law...we miss the First Test when we give the Proteas a good spanking, and arrive just in time for some ritual humiliation.

So now it’s off to Malawi or Nyasaland as it was called in the days of Harold MacMillan. Diesel is cheap, and the journey through is virtually all along Lake Malawi. Everyone raves about it....let’s hope it lives up to expectations.

MALAWI      Country 18

Few things live up to their advance publicity, and Malawi is a little bit like that.

It’s more expensive than a poor country should be, the native villages are a different design, and the camp sites have been a little disappointing, except for the Chintheche Inn which is managed by a great  Aussie.  The worse thing is the lack of a decent supermarket. We stopped off at the only supermarket for 300k in a place called Msuzu, and the fare was old and out of date. The highlight was to buy some bread dough off the supermarket bakery which we made into my breakfast speciality....dough rolled thin and fried in hot fat....delicious.

The weather is also unseasonally cool, with a lot more rain than we should have.

We keep moving very slowly South, hoping that soon we will find the ideal spot, and surprisingly so do our Antipodean friends who are moving in the same direction.

We seem to meet every other day, which is an ideal way to travel......the dinghy we learn has still not seen the light of day.