Nkhata Bay
Trip Start
Nov 18, 2002
1
123
157
Trip End
Ongoing
Nkhata Bay,
Malawi
Monday, June 30, 2008
We walked up to the main road and there we waited. The local children we had made friends with during our time in Chitimba waved us off once the bus arrived. It took 3 hours including having a tyre puncture. By the time we arrived in Mzugu the banks were closed and not wishing to have our card eaten by the machine again we decided that we would skip the bank run this time and head straight to Nkhata Bay. We got loaded into a little mini bus but it was only an hour there.
Nkhata Bay town was really busy with loads and loads of people and we soon found out why. The one and only weekly ferry that visit's the coastal towns and a couple of islands on Lake Malawi, was in port. When I say port its actually a small wooden rickety jetty
Aqua Africa dive school at Nkhata bay
.The driver of our mini bus was very helpful and found one of the guys from the hostel we were booked into. James from Myoka Village (hostel) then loaded us onto another mini bus and we headed off around the bay to our accommodation.
We arrived when it was nearly dark but the bay area looked really lovely with all the twinkling lights. We have a really nice double room with views out towards the bay.
Myoka Village was certainly a popular option with travellers. It had an open sided resturant overlooking the bay with big cushion benches and chairs for chilling out on. They also allowed people to pitch their own tents for camping( about 12 of them when we were there which made stepping over the guy ropes in the dark rather interesting)!
We stayed 2 nights here then decided that a) it was just a bit too busy for our liking (having to wait in an queue for the hot shower was a bore and b) as we were going to do some diving, carrying our gear all the way round the other side of the bar was certainly not a option to us so we relocated to a much quieter place called Aqua Africa (where we had our own hot water shower), the one and only dive centre on Nkhata Bay.
We arranged with Andy and Dusty (the very friendly owners of Aqua Africa) to do our first dives on the fresh water lake
Fisherman
.It was certainly very different.
The coral gardens we are used to seeing just wasn't there just rocks. The main type of fish of which there are over 600 types is called the cichlid. It is unique to Lake Malawi. It is a mouth breeder in that the female lays her eggs then sucks them up into her mouth once the male has tricked her into thinking there is one more egg to scoop up. This egg is actually just a mark on his back. While she tries to get the egg he quickly realises his sperm into her mouth thus fertilizing all the eggs. The eggs eventually hatch but when there is any sign of danger while her baby fish are swimming about outside her mouth, she quickly scoops them all back into her mouth for safety. We were able to witness this type of protection a couple of times on our first dive. It was quite incredible.
We also did a night dive. At night a particular night feeder fish (which we did not see on our day dive) called a Dolphin fish comes out to hunt.
Now, they just love divers with torches because as we go about shinning our lights at all the different sorts of cichlids, the dolphin fish, if close enough just come and gobbles them up. At first we thought this was really awful but then after a while you start to work on the side of the Dolphin fish and find them the biggest ones you can and BAM
Fisherman and canoe
! They are gone! No wonder we had about a dozen Dolphin fish following us throughout our 50 minute dive.
Diving in fresh water did feel so different. For a start we needed to wear much less weight before we sank and for another it was so lovely to come up from the dive not feeling all salty. Also it meant not having to rinse our equipment either after each dive. The water temp was a refreshing 24 degrees which was a little chilly for the warm water Princess Caroline!
After 5 nights in Nkhata Bay we headed south again by mini-bus to Kande Beach which is on the CHINTESE strip about an hour or so away.
