The super-blood blue moon arose dark orange over Lake Malawi and cast its orange light across the water in a blaze of color. What a sight. I’m taken back to my childhood in Los Angeles where growing up I always thought the moon was orange, its light filtered through thick smog. There’s a memory for you. Here the skies are clear and clean and the sparkling water is like glass – more pleasant to be sure.

Malawi is a narrow, land-locked country with Lake Malawi running nearly the full length of it. Fishing boats ply the water at night using lights that attract the chiclid fish; the twinkling lights give the lake its nickname, Lake of the Stars. The Malawisaurus was discovered here in the early 1900s; the museum in Karonga has a pretty good display. Considering how religious Malawi is, the display is heavy on evolution. There have been many excellent anthropological discoveries as well for the Great Rift runs through the country and was uplifted 300,000 years ago, exposing rocks and fossils millions of years old.  Hominids traveled through here on their long walk to everywhere.

Traversing the lake from top to bottom we have a wide choice of campsites. Nerve-shredding music is blasting out of totally blown speakers at the first camp and we quickly move on a few kilometers down the road to Chitemba camp. More our style – there are lovely gardens and dogs, and while music intrudes from the bar down the road, at least it isn’t right in camp. Our host explains that if he complains about the musical assault, the cops are actually in the bar drinking and nothing will be done. It must be difficult to operate a tourist business here. And really, outside of the lake there is little to entice tourists. Visas are expensive ($75USpp) where they used to be free and parks have been decimated by poaching. Of course people are friendly however nearly everyone in a uniform asks us for food or money. Odd considering how much land is given to agriculture; growing conditions appear ideal. What gives? It is the usual story – an indifferent government and corruption. And what does the rest of the world care of Malawi? The water of the lake will be worth something someday (if only they could ship it to Cape Town right now) but meanwhile there is little future here. On the upside, unlike Tanzania, English is taught in primary school – I think the first thing the kids learn is “give me money”. We’ve heard that song before.

In the large town of Mzuzu we meet some enterprising young men in the parking lot of the grocery – would we buy fruits and vegetables from them? They will happily fetch us whatever we want from their nearby stalls. We agree to see about it after we get our dry goods and on returning to the truck there is a choice of produce. I don’t barter hard. When guys are working this hard and produce is cheap, why do I need to pay a nickel or two less? One of the guys offers to show us where we might get our propane tank filled; he is small enough to fit on the seat beside me so it’s easy to take him with us. He’ll earn a small tip and while we cannot get the tank filled here, it is interesting to visit.

We’ll stay in Malawi for a month, perhaps more, as the rain southeast of us lessens. The tropical lushness of Makuzi beach with its warm water and hot sun conspire to stop time and a week can go by before you notice. There are plenty of birds, two dogs and for an encore there are an infinite number of frogs who croak and peep and burp all night long, much like the hippo symphony we enjoyed months ago in Zambia. Welcome to the Lake of the Stars.