After painting signs and sweeping paths for the Michiru center, we broke camp and headed straight for mulanji, after pitstopping at shopright to stock up on vital food for our treck up mulanji or sapitwa as the highest peak of 3002m is called. After 2 days of relatively easy trecking, first day up 1000m onto mulanji? plateau the second along to the base of sapitwa from the mulanji plataeu we had our summit day.
So after setting off in three groups the weather took a turn for the worst and Matt made the decision to turn back with the second and third group in tow, but the first group was already near the summit and with Jo’s charm and persuasion they got the guide to lead them up to the summit, after Jo lended his jacket to the guide and some difficult scrambling and bouldering in parts they reached the summit in typical british weather, and by far the worst conditions that the guide had gone up in ever. We congratulated the vicotors on there 1000m summit with complete cloud cover and absolutely no views in freezing temperatures of Joe, Hal, Mike, Jack and Hayden.
Our final day was an easy decent but seeing as we’d underestamated our food intake for the 4 days we hit a restaurant for our evening meal, superb food and a great atmosphere. Off early to the Joshua project back in blantyre where we spent our next?two days soughting out a library and rebuilding someones roof, with an amazing send off to finish with local cultral dancing and?a volley ball game where, once again like the football, we lost.
After a few annoying punctures we made our way back to Makwawa for a final days tidy up, and a TV crew came and video’d and interviewed us, we believe we got into the 6pm news because in lilongwe national park they gave us a 20% discount for being famous. Three days of safari with a?boat, a car and a canoe safari each. Seeing annimals from hippo’s to crocodiles and elephants to wilderbeasts, it was trully beautiful and the sunsets to finish with a herd of elephants migrating by was spectacular.
Fabulous meals and great breakfasts were the cherry on the top to an amazing safari, now heading off to the lake with excellent GCSE results all round we can commence our final week.
Paul Meekums