After lazying around Lake Malawi for a while, it was time to get active again! From Cape Maclear, we travelled on minibuses to Blantyre, a trip that took the whole day. After a night there, we continued to Mulanje – a little town surrounded by beautiful tea plantations with the Mulanje plateau in the back. Beautiful!

We had planned a 3 day hike with a guide (which we regretted later as he was very weird and not necessary), and were joined by two other guys and a second guide. The first day would lead us up all the way to Chisepo hut – a really tough 6 h hike which was much harder than expected! After about 1 h, we got to swim and refresh in a waterfall, which was very nice.

Later, we got some nice views hiking up the „skyline“ path, but I was struggling so much with the steep hike that I couldn’t enjoy them as much as usually. The hut was very very basic, but I was broken and slept alright anyways. I decided to skip the hike to the summit of Sapitwa though as I felt a bit sick and not up for the 5 h return hike, much of it being a steep climb. Mathijs and the guys made it up, and luckily they were above the clouds!

I, in the meanwhile, I was stuck in the fog at the hut and it only dispersed step by step once we descended towards Chambe hut later. We had planned to hike to a different hut first, but everyone was pretty tired and one guy had gotten sick (while I was feeling pretty good again). So Chambe hut it was!

In the end, it was a good choice, as Chambe hut is located beautifully, facing the steep wall of Chambe peak. The hut was still very basic, but a bit cozier than Chisepo hut.

Next day, all we had to do was hike down! Quite a long way… but as always, going down was much easier for me than up. We got some more nice views along the way – finally without clouds again!

At the bottom of the plateau, we took a refreshing dip in the natural Likhubula Pools, before hiking further to see some tea plantations. The view of the tea with the mountain plateau in the background was so beautiful, it was almost kitschy!

With this, our time in Mulanje came to an end. Just like Cape Maclear, the area would have been so nice to explore further on a rental scooter – but at the moment there’s no such thing available yet… So we took a minibus back to Blantyre, from where we crossed the border into Tete, Mozambique next day. Malawi – you have been good to us and we wouldn’t mind coming back one day!