*
A combination of large amounts of alcohol and ears stuffed with cotton wool had failed to overcome the volume of Barry's snoring which was marginally louder than the noise made by the hippopotamus. So when everyone else went for a morning walk around the lake I went back to bed for three hours essential sleep. When I got up Peter was busily setting breakfast on a long wooden table. I sat drinking tea and chatting to him as he worked. He had, he told me, a wife and four children in the north at Nyika where he owned a farm. He had previously worked for one of the national parks but had been poached by the tour company. They had trained him as a cook and he was currently working towards becoming a tour leader. The job had given him a chance to travel not only within Malawi but also into other African countries - Zambia and Zimbabwe. He was cheerful and enthusiastic. In the three weeks that we were there he never stopped smiling and was as full of bounce changing a tyre in the rain as he was preparing breakfast over an open fire.
Everyone returned at about eight thirty and after breakfast spent the rest of the morning doing nothing. I sat listening to music and intermittently reading. Sheila asked me to investigate a 'big spider' that was occupying their tent's toilet. I investigated and found that while it was unquestionably big and spider-like it was actually only a harmless cricket. Nevertheless I collected it from the wall and released it outside into the grass.
Even though we were resting there were still plenty of opportunities for wildlife viewing, albeit on a smaller scale than most people think of when you talk about Safaris.
In the tree outside our tent a bushbaby clambered about trying, or so it seemed, to evade our efforts at photographing him.
Two birds spent such a long time tumbling after each other that even I, with the aid of one of Barry's bird books, managed to identify them as Huegelin's robin.
Buzzing persistently around the tent was a particularly large and annoying wasp.
In the afternoon we went for another drive. There is only one road through the park so that it was the same route that we had taken yesterday. As we drove under the trees a greyish green adder-like snake was twined around the dead branches at the top of one, too far away for a positive identification.. It slithered away harmlessly at our approach. Several times we sighted antelope, usually the gazelle like bushbuck but also reedbuck and roan and a single distant view of the much larger kudu.
Our drive back in the dark produced only frogs and birds frozen in the beam of our headlamps and occasionally a fleeting glimpse of small mammals that Geoff would identify as 'four toed elephant shrew' or 'slender mongoose' but which were always too quick for less experienced eyes to identify.
Back at camp Peter had acceded to our request and prepared us a traditional Malawian meal. The staple of this diet is a thick maize porridge called nsima. This has the consistency of thick and glutinous mashed potato and the taste of wallpaper paste. Alone it is extremely hard to swallow and harder to digest. However if you mash salt into it and then dip it into a flavoured sauce (the one provided being made chiefly from onions) it is relatively palatable and undeniably filling.
Afterwards most people went back to their tents. I sat for a further half an hour with another beer listening to Geoff and one of the local head men chattering away in Tambuka. Even though I couldn't understand a word it was clear that there was a genuine rapport between them as they traded good natured banter. Eventually I downed the last of my drink and went to bed.
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