In the morning, we woke up from out host Katherine’s house at the crack of dawn. Katie, Wally, and I walked to the rank and got a taxi to Mulanje. We got there, and our questionable new acquaintance immediately tries to start a fight with the village drunk who was trying to touch his backpack. Well we were getting off to a great start with our Afrikaner hiking buddy Wally. While other people were being super nice and trying to usher the drunk guy away and apologize about him, our mountain guide Steve showed up out of nowhere and introduced himself. He was a small, stuttering, calves-of-steel, bundle of energy. The four of us soon found bike taxis, and we rode through endless tea fields for almost an hour. It was kind of hard to balance on the back of the bikes while carrying our super heavy packs, and I felt bad for our bike guys, who had to stand up on the pedals to make the bikes to slowly down the dirt road because we were so heavy with our packs. Electric green, flat-topped tea bushes were flying past us as Mount Mulanje (technically a Massif) slowly got closer.
We got to the entrance, paid K1000 to get in (around a dollar), then paid K1000 more each per night to use the huts that were scattered along the mountain that we would be staying at (plus K3000 per day for the key to use the pots and utensils and mats in said huts). Then we were off. We started by following white chalk lines up one path, which were there for a porter’s race that would be held the next day. In around 6 hours, we climbed about a mile in elevation. At first, Katie and I were nervous about holding Wally back, as he mentioned climbing Kilimanjaro a few times, but Katie and I were smoking him, keeping up with our superman guide Steve while Wally was falling behind. Steve even offered to switch packs with Wally (whose pack was inordinately huge), but Wally refused, saying that the problem wasn’t his pack; the problem was that he was fat, lazy, and out of shape. I was like, “the smoking probably doesn’t help either,” and he got really defensive like, “it’s not the smoking. I enjoy smoking and I’ll smoke if I want to.” I put up my hands like woah, ok, whatever “bru.” So this hiking accompaniment was going great so far…At least we had one more person to split the total cost.
Anyay, we hiked through these amazing scenes with different peaks and hills all around us, through some drizzle, and finally made it to Chisepo hut (around 2300m high) right before it started storming. There were some Irish guys already at the hut, but Katie and I were struggling to make basic conversation because we were so dead. We got some water for the hut from the river, bucket-on-the-head style, and got chastised because the hut watchman was supposed to do that for us. It didn’t even occur to us that someone else would fetch water and fireweood for us, as we were so used to doing everything for ourselves.
The next day, Steve had told us that because of the rain, it would be too difficult and dangerous to try to reach the summit. Wally way insistent on trying to summit, so he decided to stay behind and wait out the rain for another day or two. So instead, Katie, Steve, and I decided to hike down a bit out of the cold drizzle, to a spot where we could see people passing as they ran the porters’ race that day. We waited for a little while, then heard the footsteps of the first racer. He pounded down the steep, rocky path, and we cheered as he flew down the turn and out of sight through the trees. We stayed to see about 15 runners pass, and all except one, Steve pointed out that they were “from my village…from my village…from my village.” They all train on this very mountain, so they were all in the lead. We decided to continue hiking against the flow of the runners. We saw people wearing everything from nice trail shoes, toms, a lot of barefoot people, one kid with only one shoe, one guy in board shorts and his shirt flung across one shoulder as if he had just come back from the beach, undoubtedly some Malawi PCVs, some other packs of exhausted white people, and as we kept hiking, we passed the scragglers who were eating chips and drinking beer, mostly those in company groups who were strolling at a much slower pace than we had been hiking even with our huge packs.
We got to Chembe hut a few hours later, and a group from Standard Bank was ambling through. One guy at the hut was like, “What’s your slogan? Moving forward? Well you’d better move forward!” or else they would never finish the 25km race before the next day. The whole time, our guide Steve was calling people at the finish line, reporting back to us when the first guy finished. His time was just over 2 hours for 25km up and down a mountain! At the hut, we made a fire at the hut and just lazed around, eating tuna and crackers, hard boiled eggs, and hard candies. Soon enough, an American woman came up to the porch with her guide. She was living on one of the tea plantations at the bottom of the mountain doing research for how tea pickers can save money- things like mobile cash payments and the tea company holding a certain amount as a kind of savings account. She was going on and on, and at one point apologized for doing so, as she doesn’t have a lot of people to talk to. Trust us, we understand. Talk away. The day ended after a dinner of ramen noodles, when Katie decided that it was bed time. At 5:45pm. A new record. The sun was barely down, but that was good enough for her.
After a failed attempt at making fire and the guard having to come to help us, we made oatmeal and apples for breakfast, then met Steve to start out. We went down down down for a couple of hours to a waterfall where we had a leisurely rest. There were other tourists there, wearing non-hiking clothes and with no gear, so we knew that we must have been close to the bottom.
Sure enough, about an hour more of descending, we found the road and made it back to the forest at the bottom. We walked to Steve’s house to pay him ($75 for the 3 days) and to collect the extra stuff we’d dropped off there. We said goodbye, got on the bike taxis, and went back to town, where we got the side-of-the-road samosas we had been craving all day: our motivation for hiking swiftly down the mountain. We taxied back to Blantyre where we were staying with our Response PCV host again. We met her after her ultimate Frisbee practice at an Indian restaurant for some take away food, then went back and stayed the night at her house.
Sure enough, about an hour more of descending, we found the road and made it back to the forest at the bottom. We walked to Steve’s house to pay him ($75 for the 3 days) and to collect the extra stuff we’d dropped off there. We said goodbye, got on the bike taxis, and went back to town, where we got the side-of-the-road samosas we had been craving all day: our motivation for hiking swiftly down the mountain. We taxied back to Blantyre where we were staying with our Response PCV host again. We met her after her ultimate Frisbee practice at an Indian restaurant for some take away food, then went back and stayed the night at her house.
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