Blantyre, Thyolo and Mulanje town

We arrived in Blantyre after a lovely coach journey and headed straight to Doogles, a backpackers lodge recommended in our guide book. We wanted to use the internet and it was a good place to wait to be picked up by Rose, who then took us to her house to stay that night. On the way we got ice cream that tasted of strawberry angel delight :) The evening was nice, quite chilled except for a treacherous drive in the rain in the dark. We played cards and started to watch a film but went to bed quite early because we planned to head to Thyolo and Mulanje the next day.

We got up pretty early but didnt actually leave Blantyre until about 12 (Malawians do stuff slowly) and us and Angella (Rose's daughter) got driven by her cousin in a car that leaked water on all but Kats head (hahaha). At Thyolo there were huge tea estates which were really beautiful- rolling light green fields and sometimes you could see tea pickers with baskets on their backs. We got some sugar cane on the way which everyone eats here-the roads are covered in the peel of them. Thyolo town was quite busy-there was a market on with lots of fresh food. We went into one of the tea estates and were going to see the factory but it was maintenance day so nothing was happening. It was good to see the whole place though.

From Thyolo we headed onto Mulanje town where we booked into a motel for the night. The view of the mountain was absolutely amazing - from just outside our room you could see such a view. We explored Mulanje a little bit, the market, a conservation centre and nearby chitikale where we arranged to go up the mountain the next day. Everyone was really helpful- except maybe the people at the motel who tried to charge us more for sharing a room because we were all girls (ok then) and then kept adding up our cash so it wasn't enough (when really we had given them too much in an attempt to tip!) We all conquered the cold shower even though there was a several huge spiders in it! soooo brave