Day 1 - Drunken porter or sick grandma

  Chisepo, Mt. Mulange, Malawi
Wednesday, April 5, 2006

We'd arranged to get a 6am start to avoid the heat for what was going to be a steep climb. By 6:30 neither the porter or the guide had arrived so I walked down to the village to find them. Beste said that Jeffrey had probably been out on the piss the night before and that was why he was late. I'd given them both an advance on their wages for food, I wondered what exactly they had spent that money on!

We decided to set off anyway and Jeffrey turned up later and give me some sob story about how he'd had to go that morning to give some food to his poor sick grandma. Although I did wonder why he hadn't been able to do that the previous afternoon!

Nice water fall on route up Mulange

We stopped at a spectacular waterfall on the way up. The track was extremely steep and slippery and almost like ice in spots. We had some great views down to the valley while climbing up but eventually we headed up into the clouds that are famous for enveloping the summit of Mulange.

All the way up we could see people walking down with large loads of cut timber on the heads or shoulders. 3 days later I was to try to pick one of these planks up failing miserable! Beste said these guys got paid about 40c a day!

Beste managed to annoy me about half way up the mountain when he suggested I change my whole 4 day route. I had mentioned wanted to get back to Blantyre after my final days hiking. At the bottom yesterday he had said this would not be a problem and now he was saying it would not be possible. I'm not too sure if this was because he wanted to do a shorter route and get out earlier on the final day! Regardless I decided to stick with my original route.

The saw men

Just before lunch we went and did a bit of a bushwhacking through the forest to see if we could find some of the local woodcutters. They were sawing planks from a tree trunk that was suspended in the air. They had a huge saw that one guy was using from the bottom and the other was using from the top.

I thought Beste has taken me here for my own benefit but it turns out he really wanted to do some business for himself and he spent the next 30 minutes negotiation while I just sat and waited for him.

He bought a whole tree for 200 Kwacha ($1.70). From this he would get 4 planks that would each sell for 240 Kwacha each. A pretty big mark up!

Some of the burnt trees

A lot of the area we were now traveling through was now burnt trees and not the prettiest of scenery. At one point a quite remarkable thing happened. A crow came flying through the trees pursued by some bird of prey. It got so close to me I was just about to duck!

Keeping up with the standard knowledge of most of the African guides I've had so far Beste remarked, wow did you see that bird chasing the eagle!

Everlasting flower 2

Everlasting flowers

Nice flowers

Once we got higher things started to open up a bit and it was extremely pretty. Lots of flowers, so I helped Beste extend his knowledge a bit and gave him the names of some. Not too sure how much notice he took.

Interestingly the Everlasting Flowers here were yellow. They had been white in Uganda and red on Kili. The same red gladiolas from Kili were also white here.

The scenery up on Mt. Mulange

View down into the valley from Chisepo Hut - early

Chisepo Hut

Life in the hut

We had a spot of rain during the afternoon and it became very misty. We arrived at Chisepo Hut at 2:30, it was all very nice and only about a year old. When inside I noticed the sign saying switch off the lights. I remarked to the warden how good it was that they had solar power, he replied that it had been good but 6 months ago someone had stolen all the panels!

John, as the warden was called, lit the fire and I was able to hang out my clothes to try and boil some water for a cup of Milo. As the afternoon progressed most of the mist and cloud cleared up and some nice views opened up down to the valley.

The really bonus about these huts was they sold beer for the price of $1 a bottle. How cheap is that considering someone has had to hike it all the way up here. It was actually the same price it was sold for in Doogles back in Blantyre! I did my best to help John out with his little business venture and polished off a few while allowing the BBC World Service to send me to sleep.