Lonely Planet Malawi
Travel Report
Lilongwe to Livingstonia
The MV Ilala
Zomba & Blantyre
Trekking on Mt Mulanje
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Travel Notes
Zomba
Blantyre
Photos
Livingstonia
Lake Malawi & the MV Ilala
Blantyre & Mt Mulanje
Soundbites
Livingstonia Choir 1
Livingstonia Choir 2
Lake Malawi at Night
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Travel notes from Blantyre
Hi Everyone,
Thank you to those of you who emailed me with concern about my spider bite; thank you also to the person who informed me that lion bites tend to be far more annoying. It took five days before I was able to walk again, four of those I spent at Doogles in Blantyre. The bite was on a toe on my right foot between the pad of the toe and the foot. Two fang marks were clearly visible and the venom killed off a thick layer of skin that turned white and blistered, meanwhile the toe swelled up and turned bright red. After a day pus and blood began leaking through the fang marks and soon the dead flesh split open and my toe leaked pus continuously for three days. It finally stopped leaking, the swelling began to ease and a day later Graeme and myself drove to the Mulanje Massif and camped for a day at the Forest Resthouse at Likabula waiting another day for the swelling to finally ease.
The Mulanje Massif rises steeply in the far southeast of the country near to the border with Mozambique. The sheer cliffs of the massif rise over 1,000m from the surrounding undulating highlands that are covered in vast tea plantations. The massif is approximately 30km from east to west and 25km from north to south and covers an area of some 600 sq km. We planned to spend four days trekking to the highest point of the massif, Sapitwa Peak at 3,001m, the highest mountain in central Africa, and then do a traverse across the massif. After my previous treks on this trip up mountains over 4,500m I guessed that this would be the easy one; how wrong I was with this assumption.
After a days rest at the forest resthouse my foot was once again good enough to walk on and at 08.00 we began our ascent with a guide from 800m to the Chambe Hut at 1,900m. We followed the steep skyline path up the side of the massif following a ridge with the Likabula River flowing down a steep forested valley to our south. It was a hard slog and I began to realise that sitting around for five days with a bad foot was not the best preparation for a trek up this mountain. Once we reached the top of the plateau the going got a lot easier as we crossed the Chambe Basin, covered with a commercial pine plantation. It took three and a half hours to reach the hut where we collapsed in front of a log fire and relaxed for the day ready for our summit attempt at first light the next day.
The caretaker at the hut lit the fire at 05.00 the next morning so we could make some breakfast and have a cup of tea before setting off for the summit at 06.15. At this time I had no real idea about how far or how long it would take to reach the summit; the guide said it was a long walk. It took two and half hours to reach the base of the peak walking up and down some steep hills and along a knife edge ridge that connects the Chambe Basin with the main massif. I was already exhausted and soon became depressed to learn that after all the climbing we had done we had descended back down to 2,000m and still had 1,000m to climb. The trail lead very steeply up the broad northwest ridge of Sapitwa up slabs of sheer granite strewn with boulders. It was a 550m climb to reach the next ridge and I really thought that I wouldn't make it any further; my legs were turning into jelly.
We rested on the ridge from where it was 1.5km to the summit climbing another 450m. A guidebook by Frank Eastwood describes this next section perfectly, 'Allow at least two hours for this final section as it is very sinuous and picks a tortuous route over a boulder strewn wilderness, riddled with gullies, ravines and giant monoliths.' It was almost a continuous scramble to the summit hauling ourselves over these giant boulders; some were so large that we had to crawl through tunnels underneath them. The gullies were overgrown with giant heathers that we had to scrape through; sometimes we lost the trail markers in the tangle of vegetation. It was the toughest climb I have ever done and at times I would stop and just stare at the slabs and boulders of granite in front of me trying to work out a route up and over them. Finally after a last crawl through a tunnel under the boulders we emerged on the summit and were greeted by spectacular views over the massif and surrounding undulating hills. It was midday, the weather was perfect, blue skies above us and clouds below, it was absolutely silent and still at the summit.
We rested at the summit before beginning the descent. Going down was just as hard, it was worse than a workout at the gym tying to climb down these giant boulders. It took two and a half hours to reach the base of the peak, by then I had fallen over twice as my legs were so tired walking down sheer granite slabs at an angle of 40-50'. The last leg back to the hut was only possible when the adrenaline kicked in, suddenly I found myself leaping up rocks again. It was dark when we reached the Chambe Hut at 18.00, twelve hours after setting out; within an hour we were fast asleep, absolutely exhausted. We abandoned our plans of a traverse of the massif and took a day off to recover at the hut before descending back to the forest resthouse from where we drove back to Blantyre. I later found out that Sapitwa in the local language means, 'Don't go there'.
Graeme has now left for Mozambique along the Tete corridor. I'm back on the chicken busses on Tuesday heading for Mozambique at the Milange border crossing. It sounds like it will be a very challenging journey; there are apparently no paved roads in the country north of the Zambezi River. I've now got a day to learn some Portuguese too.
Ate mais logo.
Adeus, Geoff.
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