Languages: English
Population: 1000-2000
Prices: Cheap! Except petrol
Attractions: Lake Malawi
Info: Probably the most beautiful place at Lake Malawi, near Monkey Bay. Slowly gaining more popularity amongst tourists and backpackers. Several nice lodges and hostels located inside a small African village, giving the place a unique feeling.
SA Recommends: Mufasa Lodge (cheap, peaceful, good food, beautiful scenery)
6.12 12:16 GMT+1
It was a struggle to get to Cape Maclear, but it was most definitely worth the horrible bus ride. The buses in Malawi really make you appreciate the public transportation system in Finland. This time it took 8 hours sitting in the bus to get to the Monkey Bay, even though it's only 250km (you have to get into the bus 2 hours before departure to secure yourself a seat, unless you really like standing in a bus). After arriving to Monkey Bay, we found out that the only ATM in the town does not work with our Visa-cards. Only option was to take a taxi to the nearest Standard Bank, which was half an hour away. Our streak of amazing luck continued and the next ATM was closed. Well, we had no other choises than to drive to the next ATM which didn't work with our cards either. Now the only option was to drive to the next city, Mangochi, where there should definitely be a working ATM. Our taxi driver was was getting the feeling we might not be able to pay the ride so he was getting restless, and so were we.
Finally in Mangochi we find a working ATM, are able to pay the driver and head back towards Monkey Bay. As it turns out, taxi's are quite expensive in Malawi because of the petrol shortage which is why all the petrol is sold in black market. But we don't care, we are at Cape Maclear and our expensive nightmare is finally over. We arrive to our destination only to find out that the lodge we were supposed to stay in is no more and in its place, there's a Mufasa lodge. I didn't have the best experience with the Mufasa lodge in Lilongwe but we decided to stay there regardless and we are lucky we did. We couldn't have hoped for a better place to stay and relax in.
The next couple of days were extremely uneventful, which was exactly what I wanted. We spent our days eating, sleeping, chilling at the beach, reading books in a hammock and playing local extremely addictive board game, Bao.
On our third day we ran out of money again, even though everything was extremely reasonably priced. We decided it would be too much of a hassle to go to Mangochi and come back to Cape Maclear again, so we cut our losses and decided to head straight back to Lilongwe. I was really sad to leave serene Cape Maclear and our wonderful host J, but there is still lot of places for us to see and it was time to move on.
Next Destination: Nkhata Bay
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