Cape Maclear Part 2.

Happy new month everyone! :-).

Cape Maclear or Chembe is a small fishing village found on the shores of lake Malawi. As mentioned earlier in my previous post: Cape Maclear part 1, Cape Maclear is a leading tourist destination in Malawi. Cape Maclear has a reputation of being some sort of “travelers black hole” meaning once you get there you will not want to leave. This we found out to be true after staying for two weeks instead of the one week that we had planned to!.

Cape Maclear is very small and a short stroll will basically get you everywhere. That being said , the town does not have a bank or an ATM machine and most places will only accept cash. The nearest ATM can be found at Monkey bay and you would have to either take a taxi or motorbike to get there. However it is very unreliable and we learnt that the hard way after we ran out of money. Your next option would be going all the way to Mangochi town which is about 60 km away which we ended up doing!.

The road to Mangochi had the most roadblocks we had seen in all of Malawi. They even had an immigration roadblock where as a foreigner you have to produce your passport for you to proceed to Mangochi town. We later found out that you can easily get into Mozambique from Mangochi and its a mere 20 mins away and people have been known to sneak into Mozambique or Malawi without proper papers. So we had to state our purpose of visit to Mangochi, where we were staying and even contacted the Camp to confirm that yes we were staying there and would definitely be heading back there. Smh.

When in Cape Maclear, you must walk through the village which is a great way to see how the average Malawian lives. Malawians are very friendly and everywhere you go you will be met with smiles and curious looks. On one of our walks through the village, i found a local tailor who made me an awesome pair of shorts using local fabric `chitenge`.

IMG_20170402_120823 — How cute are my shorts!<3

When it comes to places to eat by the beach you want a great, reasonably priced place with amazing food. Some of the places worth checking out include :

1.Gecko lodge currently dabbed the place to be. They also have the biggest well stocked bar in Cape Maclear.

2. The Funky Cichlid is one of those cool backpacker-hippie vibe sort of place. Perfect place for some delicious fish curry and a Sundowner.

3. Fat Monkeys is an open air restaurant with a cool beach vibe in the south end of the village and another place you can also just go for drinks.

If you are looking for fun water activities Kayak Africa and The funky Cichlid come highly recommended.

Cape Maclear was such a wonderful place and we absolutely loved everything about it! From staying at a Bamboo hut on the beach, being off the grid, late night swimming in the lake, lazy beach days,sunset beach walks, yoga by the beach,a game of cards with strangers,indulging in so much fish curry,kayaking, snorkelling, boat cruises, to buying big fat avocados from Locals we loved it all!!.

After Cape Maclear our next stop was an island by Mozambique, but first to get there we would have to take a ferry :Mv Ilala. Post will be up soon!<3.