The few days in Chintheche had been great and, feeling well rested, it was time to say goodbye to this special place.
Once everything was loaded up I popped in to Mariette to say farewell and thank her for her warm hospitality.
For anyone ever considering either motorbiking or driving through this part of Africa you really should try to make this a stopover.
Then, after carefully negotiating the couple of kilometres up to the main road, I turned south and enjoyed the warm morning air in my face. This was secondary road for about two hundred and fifty kilometres as far as Salima but, apart from occasional potholes and rickety wooden bridges, the beauty of it is that there was very little traffic.
It’s hard to believe that quite often a big articulated truck will travel this road and cross these bridges.
It was lovely to ride slowly through little villages and rural communities where people were busy getting on with the chores of everyday life.
Water, as everywhere, is the source of life and living and I came across several of these quite robust looking hand pumps being operated by local women. From observation they seemed to draw water more rapidly.
I later met up with a Scottish water systems engineer who told me that they are being rolled out throughout Malawi and that they are indeed more efficient and easier to pump.
This is a regular sight in this part of Africa. Earth gets burnt back and the larger charcoaled sticks are then gathered and sold as fuel for cooking. Ecologically this is catastrophic for both the local and the global environment but it’s hard to relate the Paris Accord to the lives of ordinary Africans who have no other access to cooking fuels. A bit like some guy in Brussels telling an eighty year old bachelor in the west of Ireland that he can’t cut turf.
Once past Salima the road west improved and the next eighty or ninety kilometres was dream motorcycling surface. The soft curves meandered over the undulating hills and the views all around were spectacular.
By late afternoon I started to hit checkpoints more frequently and this is always an indication that you are nearing a big town or city. Before long I had checked in to the hotel that I had booked in advance. And after thirty degrees heat for most of the day it was time for a nice long shower…..
ZIGZAGGING AFRICA BY MOTORBIKE 