Day 42 Trout Farm Campsite, Zomba Plateau

Up at 5.30 but it still took us till 8 am to leave as we ended up chatting for ages to two other couples.  The plan was to do a game drive on the way out of the park but in the end we cut this short and headed out as we couldn’t get close to the river, and apart from dozens of warthog there was not a huge amount to see.  Also Ian has managed to injured his shoulder so the bulk of the driving would be down to me which meant it would take quite a bit longer to get anywhere.

Having skipped breakfast, we decided to stop in Liwonde for brunch at a little roadside café.  It seemed a bit early for chicken and chips but it was scrummy – even if a bit disconcerting to have your chicken’s brothers and sisters clucking around the floor of the cafe. 

The drive down to Zomba was actually quite short with the last few miles being very steep to get up onto the 1700m high Zomba plateau.  For once not having a map proved a bit tricky and we were for a while slightly misplaced and “teddy bears were thrown out the pram” with Jane driving up a never ending, extremely steep and bumpy forestry track with no idea where it ended - but it was actually the right road and we finally emerged at the top of the plateau. With views across Zomba and the plains below (even if a bit hazy) we checked out both the viewpoints: one named after Emperor Halle Salassie and the other after the Queen Mother – the Emperor’s view was definitely the better one. 

The mountain is essentially an active forestry reserve and with Malawi’s deforestation issues we were shocked by the amount of timber left lying around despite the locals bringing chopped wood down the mountain balanced on pedal bikes – this seemed like a particularly gruelling job. 

We had been warned that the Trout Farm campsite had seen much better days and was over-run with baboons.  However, we thought it was a lovely site, set in the woods, and not a baboon in sight.  The trout farm itself was no longer in operation but we were told that it was planned to restock it with trout in the next couple of months. Ian found a good use for the farm's water channel though to cool the beer!