Not a long way from Lilongwe...

So I've been wicked excited to find out that just outside of big city Lilongwe there's a lot of nice hiking. Even though I don't have a car, it's not hard to hitch a ride out on the weekends--this Saturday being no exception.

I went with a couple folk from a microfinance NGO that sort of combined the hike with a site visit. Those of us who were not part of the NGO waited outside of this gas station where speakers underneath the roof blared Michael Jackson's "The way you make me feel" (I really like that song, I mean profoundly so).

Across from the gas station was another one of their microfinance projects--a small small grocery. We got some food stuffs for the hike.

That's Claudia on the left--she lives here with her husband--and Debra who is visiting from the NGO's headquarters in the UK (small world, Debra is also Kate's roommate...Kate went back to the UK which is very, very sad).

Apparently, Ntchisi (where we went) is the last patch of rain forest left in Malawi (I haven't double checked that factoid). Anyway, it definitely did have that rain forest feel from the start.

That's Arthur in the front and Mike, Claudia's husband on the far right.

So we hiked through the rain forest (I was on constant snake patrol). We had to stay pretty much on the trail because apparently there are traps set to catch antelope (another unchecked factoid). The trees were amazing, however, and we did step off to take a closer look.

After about an hour of hiking we hit a clearing that overlooked the lake (although it was hard to see because there's so much smoke from people burning crops).

We had some lunch on a big rock.

My favorite part of lunch was the name of the crackers.

It was a really great hike and I can't wait to go back.

We rode home in the back of the pick-up where we made some small friends.

When I got home I was really dusty from the back of the pick-up and very tired from all that fun and excitement so I just ate some fruit and went to bed.