The Past Week: Chinteche

Starting last Sunday (the 14th) a friend of mine, Asif, and I headed north for a few days of hiking and a couple on Lake Malawi. We drove to Rumphi, took transport into Nyika National Park, hiked 55km east to Livingstonia, hiked 15 km more to the lake shore, took public transit back to Rumphi (and the car), and then drove to Chinteche for the weekend on the beach. I'll be working back with a new post each day about each step of the trip. With that in mind, let's start with Chinteche, a strip of beach in northern Malawi:

The beach weekend was mainly a gathering of Clinton Health Access Initiative (Serena's employer) employees, sans Serena. Odd. She was in southern Malawi at Mt. Mulanje for a retreat, while I was on the lake swimming and making sand castles. We were renting out the same house from November's Thanksgiving weekend but with a totally new crew and without our mascot Bay. Here's a dark photo (the sun was simply too perfect and bright for the camera) of the gang:

We swam and read, ate and chatted, built sand castles (unfortunately can't find a photo!) and buried bodies.

Craig (below with smoothies) and I thoroughly enjoyed jokes about Germans from the Tasteless Jokes book that brought down the house.

An excellent weekend with good company and perfect weather.