These are my photos capturing my time spent cycling through the warm heart of Africa. Unfortunately I don’t have many blog posts from Malawi as the four I had were lost when my laptop was stolen. There was one interesting blog post about getting hit by a dead flying chicken! Seriously I was cycling a long, this car came around a corner at 100km/hr, hit this chicken that then went flying (in regards to speed not flapping) across the road and smacked straight into my torso! As a villager ran to pick it up for dinner, I kept cycling and thought “I just got hit by a dead flying chicken!”

When the kids weren’t shouting “Mzungu give me”, they were inquisitive little critters. At times I would have a road side sleep and wake up with 20 kids circling me, but they always kept at a distance until they felt safe. My little trick I loved to play was opening up one of my panniers like in the above photo. All the kids would move in closer craning their necks to see what was in side. Then I would suddenly shout “BOO!” On one particular occasion I did this beside a ditch and one poor little fella went arse over tit down a ditch. Everybody including the elders sitting outside the mud hut were in hysterics as well the hairy Mzungu. The little fella luckily also saw the funny side.

I really appreciated finding a spot all to myself where I didn’t have a crowd of people sitting two metres away e watching the freak show that was in town.

Stopping off at one of the many road side chip stands. As usual getting a lot of attention from the friendly folk.

I lived off these wood fired chip stands. Super greasy and oily chips with lots of salt for about 30 cents. Carbs and calories, just what the doctor ordered.

This to you is just a whole bunch of cars lined up. And you are right, it is. But this is a 143 car queue at the petrol station! The funny thing was that there was no petrol at the petrol station, but a rumour that a truck was going to go there. There was a major crisis in Malawi, a lack of foreign currency meant they were unable to buy petrol. You can imgine the crippling effect this had on the economy. Most petrol statons were ghostly buildings with people having to buy petrol on the black market that was smuggled in from neighbouring countries. I had to buy a litre of petrol for my cooker and was told US$9 a litre, of which I declined. I ended up finding some in another town for $4.

Setting up my tent in a friendly locals front yard who I met whilst buying tomatoes in a small road side town.

Friendly strangers who showered me with generosity. I have never eaten so much, they treated me to a feast fit for a king. I actually felt like throwing up.

Most days I would cycle through lots of these little small towns, crackly music blasting from the speakers, chickens everywhere, fly covered raw meat hanging up, people sitting around and wall to wall shops selling all sorts of stuff for everyday life.

Finally arriving on the shores of Lake Malawi. This was the moment I had been cycling towards since the start.

I had heard about Kandi beach, a camping ground an overland truck driver had told me about. After a 120km day I turned off at a busy little roadside market with the sun getting lower in the sky. I cycled down a non descript sandy dirt road through villages to some big gates. The security guard opened up the gates and I cycled in and my goodness me it just so happened I had arrived in paradise! I went straight to the bar got a beer, walked to the beach, peeled my clothes and dived into the warm water.

Yep it’s hard to believe that the above photo is taken in a land locked African country. As you can imagine my 1 night turned into 6 nights and it was there along with 7 other overland trucks to watch the All Blacks beat the French in the rugby world cup final. Oh and somewhere on that beach is my cell phone.

Views like this whilst cycling along the lake make it pretty easy to keep on pedalling.

End of the trip, 2,550km ticked off. I locked my bike to a tree in Northern Malawi and did a 3 day chicken bus mission up to Tanzania’s Mt Kilimanjaro for my 30^th birthday!

HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A SUPER AWESOME NEW YEAR.