Monkey Bay, Baby!

There's too much happiness to relate from my perch here at the bar, so I'll give you the disaster story instead.

So after 12 hours crammed in the back of VW minibusses with 25 locals and their stuff, I pulled into this town for the first time. But I wasn't staying, so I jumped in the back of the last pickup headed out to Cape Mclear. Only maybe 15 of us, but no cage so it was plenty tight. And it was 4wd territory the whole way out.

Anyway, about 10k in, we're halfway up a long hill and the radiator finally gives out. No worries, right. We start rolling back to see what can be done, and that's when the brakes go. We pick up speed. People start hollering. People start jumping out. One guy goes over the hood is riding on it. I'm up on the rail, jettisoning my bag, when the driver cuts the wheel to the side. We slam into the hillside doing about 20, and I do my best flying leap over the side.

I land in a forward roll, and am up and scurrying downhill, expecting to see the truck cartwheeling towards me, but it has dug itself into the side of the hill and dispensed about half of its passengers off the back. Amazingly, nobody was seriously hurt.

But yeah, Cape Mclear made up for it all. Best place I've found yet in Africa. $1.50 for a room, $0.30 for a beer. Great beach and flat, clear, warm fresh water.

No worries.

written by  Jason Kester on April 18, 2003 from Monkey Bay, Malawi
from the travel blog: Africa, 2003
tagged Pickup, Crash and CertainDeath
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