Lucky breaks!

Driving to the lake I noticed one of the Cape Maclear lodges is owner by Robin Pope Safaris, an outfit managed by my cousin. A few WhatsApps later and our first night at the lake just got upgraded from mystery campsite to five star lodge. Pumulani (rest well) Lodge is the dog's bollocks; what a way to start!

Roughing it at Pumulani Loge

Malawi immigration at Monkey Bay was closed for the weekend. But some investigating from Isaac, our hired driver, and we had the officers number. He agreed to meet with us at Pumulani lodge and stamped our Malawi exit. We are now free to exit, we will be in “transit” the next three days before Meponde town, where we enter Mozambique.

Immigration is closed - but we're through!

Unwrapped kayak and no transport damage, looks great. But we had way too much gear for the modest hatch space. We did discover a small hatch opening between the legs of the seat, too small to fit any bags but we could fit individual pouches of our MSR meals. Seeing how they come in bomb-proof packaging we loaded them one by one into each seat, saving huge space. After screwing in a few more custom places deck mounts and buying some rubber car tube strips from the side of the road, we improvised some deck mounts and managed to find a home for 90% of our gear. We turned our sleek Swift Hybrid kayak into a mini double decker bus, but we are now self sufficient for three weeks.

Test pack

Cheers all

Brent