Nkatha Bay - August 8th / 9th

August 8th / 9th, 2008:

Short: First punctured tire!, Change tire, Relax, Dinner, Birthday Party!, Hurt all day, Recover

Long: We have certainly had occasional bouts of luck while on the trip, and this morning was perhaps the best. We woke up to find our right rear tire completed deflated. Apparently we must have developed a slow leak on the drive the day before. You might be asking why we consider this lucky. While the puncture itself is not lucky, that it happened at a beautiful lakeside hostel with two days to relax certainly is. After relaxing for a bit in the morning we pulled out one of our spare tires and the jack and changed the tire. It was not as easy as we would have thought. The hi-lift jack (In the picture), was not particularly easy to use and it took about an hour before we safely jacked the car high enough to change the tire. Hopefully that will be the first and last puncture on the trip.

After dinner the fun began. August 8th is my birthday, and we did our best to celebrate accordingly. It was pretty random. After a few drinks at the hostel we headed to a local bar with Zoe, Chris, and a few others, including a female Israeli army helicopter pilot. Zoe, is Scottish girl, and currently working as a researcher in Blantyre, Malawi. Interestingly she was at the hostel with her parents who were visiting from Scotland. Chris is Austrian Air force pilot, and currently on holiday. We ended up at a bar run by an East German girl, Danielle, which allowed Nikolai to practice his German. I rolled back into the tent around 3am and Nikolai didn’t make it back until 6am. As can be seen, we ended up with quite a few pictures…I have no idea who some of the people are. It was a fun night and a horrible next day. So horrible, in fact, that we really don’t have anything to write. Mortimer, Nikolai’s cousin, was supposed to arrive into Lilongwe today, but Air France didn’t let him on the flight and hw would arrive the next day. We were actually thankful for this because it meant we could stay another day in Nkatha Bay. We plan on meeting him tomorrow in Senga Bay.