Foiled Escape
Day 259
I’m trying to think of a nice thing to say about Lilongwe, but its tough to come up with one. I like cities and can usually come up with at least one thing that I enjoy about a particularly terrible city. Guatemala City had a few beautiful colonial buildings, Tegucigalpa had a pedestrian street and even Jo’burg had the great Melville area. Lilongwe? It has piles of garbage, dirt roads, traffic, beggars and one of the most chaotic and filthy bus stations I’ve ever seen. Actually I don’t think you can call it a station, its more of a huge yard, with buses everywhere. To top it all off there really isn’t any backpacker accommodation in the city. The less you spend the chances are you will be staying in the sort of place that rents by the hour.
We left Korea Garden today and went to the bus station around 10am looking for a bus north. We were told one was leaving at 12pm so we went to kill some time at an internet cafe. We returned at 11:30 and still no bus. 12 o’clock passed by and still no bus, they did say it would show up sometime but by now there was a large number of people waiting for this bus. “Let’s just go, we can leave tomorrow”. I said to Jordana. We spent all day yesterday travelling here and got a late start today, it just didn’t make sense to keep going and again arrive in darkness. Although I didn’t really want to stay another night in Lilongwe.
We took a taxi back to the first hotel we tried yesterday, lucky us they had a room. Much nicer and a friendlier price than Korea Garden. We spent the day on the internet and bought some snacks for tomorrows bus trip. Our room was basic but clean, exactly what you want from a budget place. It even had a tv so we watched plenty of BBC and caught a bad movie, until the power went out for a few hours. A normal occurrence all over this part of Africa, a full day with power is a rare event.
For dinner we had italian at a restaurant that was full with volunteers and NGO workers. I’ve read that Malawi is the handout capital of Africa, by the number of volunteers and SUV’s from aid organizations around the city it was easy to believe. We watched some tv, packed up and got to bed early so we could get an early start and get out of this city in the morning. Oh I just realized the one thing that isn’t terrible about Lilongwe, crime. Sure its not safe at night but its safer than most African capitals. Maybe that can be their tourism slogan, “We’re safer than Jo’burg!”
Tags: Lilongwe, Malawi, Zambia
Michael Coroneos
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