The longest way round is the shortest way home.: Trip to Likoma Island

To sum it up, so you know what you’re about to read – Likoma Island is great. Getting there is awful. Thus, my advice is to visit if at all possible but make sure not to try and get there. I actually found a statistic that rated the ferry service as the absolute worst in the world. You can check the stat here. But don't get distracted! Come back and read!

I left Blantyre in the morning for Monkey Bay, the port town where I’d be catching the ferry, called the Ilala, for Likoma Island. At Monkey Bay I stayed in a lovely little electricity-less hostel called Mufasa’s which was right on the lake. It was pretty idyllic, and currently the staff is comprised of a couple of American girls, an Israeli and a Dutch guy who, how should we put this, like to have a good time? Spend the majority of ~~nights,~~ ~~days~~ the time ~~drunk,~~ ~~stoned~~ not sober, which makes for a great atmosphere, though I didn’t partake in the daily festivities as I had to catch the ferry early the following morning. The lake was wonderful to swim in, until I found out that once in a while a crocodile parks his camboose on the beach and can get a little bitey. Then swimming was less fun. Then, when I found out the last croc siting was in 2009, I felt a little bitter at having cut my swim short.

We climbed to the top of a rock-island and saw the view at sunset, which was beautiful.

In the evening, when night had fallen, I decided to have a little fun with my camera using the 60-second aperture, along some other obscure settings to get a couple of cool pictures. Here are the results:

There are other photos with two of me. It's fun to play with new discoveries.

The following morning I boarded the ferry. I would be on it for 35 hours.

Most guests stay on the top deck because cabins are too expensive, the lower deck is technically reserved for cargo (goats, chickens, the works) along with their owners, so we were told we couldn’t sit there. The top deck is quite nice – you get A LOT of sun. There’s a little covered area, that often feels hotter than direct sunlight, but other than that you’d better be ready to get a tan. At night, you can rent a foam mattress for $2. I had not brought a sleeping bag because I didn’t have space, so come 3am when the wind picked up, I was freezing. I’d put on my water-proof, and hopefully wind-proof, trousers and jacket, which meant I near boiled when I hit the hay at 9pm, but still near froze at 3am! Also, one has to be weary of the rats. I didn’t kill any, but they know who’s not their friend.

We arrived at 8pm at the island, which has no dock and, this particular evening, had no electricity! I tell you, you haven’t disembarked from a boat until you’ve taken a little dingy to shore, lit only by the moon. I followed my colleague, Peter, to a hotel nearby and tried to get some rest for the night. However, a windowless, concrete room would put Finnish saunas to the test and I’m pretty sure I lost half my body mass in water weight that night.

The next day we visited a bunch of schools – we were here on work after all. We made it to the hostel we’d planned on staying at in the afternoon. ‘Mango Drift’ is another great hostel, has a huge private beach and a lovely bar. The food was also great, but we’ll get to that in a bit. That afternoon, I rested, I slept, I swam. I recharged the proverbial batteries, and the real batteries as the electricity had been restored to the island.

The following morning’s wake up was 5am to catch a boat to a nearby island (12km away) where we needed to visit 3 schools. Why man settled so far from convenience will never make sense to me. ‘Convenience’ has changed it’s meaning over the centuries, but in this day and age it means where one has mobile phone signal, and internet.

After visiting those schools, we had to wait for the weather to calm down before heading back to Likoma Island to visit the two final schools. There, we interviewed a number of the students. It was very interesting to hear how much Mary’s Meals’ daily feeding had changed their lives, from their perspective.

We got done with everything around 3pm and headed back to the hostel where I, once again, crashed for the better part of the afternoon. For dinner, which, having not eaten more than a pack of coconut biscuits and small pieces of fish all day meant I was a wee bit famished, we had crocodile. Oh yeah, I got my revenge from the spoiled swim in Monkey Bay. Crocodile was actually delicious – kind of tastes like a mixture of beef and chicken, and has a texture similar to tough fish (like a tuna steak… but not). It was great.

One thing that never ceased to amaze me was the sky on the island on the way to it. The sky is huge, though not quite as big as in Texas, and so blue. The Lake is an even deeper blue and the way the light, which has a more powerful, luminous quality than I’ve seen before, plays upon the water and the land is simply stunning. Of course, sunsets and sunrises are the best where the colors of the leaves, ground, sky, clouds and water complemented each other delicately and transported me back to autumn evenings in the south of France, which artists such as Van Gogh and Cezanne depicted so perfectly. If only they’d spent a summer here.

The following morning, if 3.30am can be called ‘the following morning’ we had to get up to catch the Ilala back to Monkey Bay. We made it to the ferry at around 4.30am, waited until 6am to board, and then waited till 10am till we left. It’s probably the worst ferry in the world. Cheers to another 34 hours.

But I'm back at Doogles Hostel now. I have my last day at Mary's Meals tomorrow and I leave for Mozambique on Friday! So check next week for another update!

Thanks for reading!

p.s. Photos!