Monkeys are on the roof at 5am and my sleep doesn’t really go too well after that. I wake up groggy and it takes a coffee on the deck to properly come into being awake.
Gilson is here at 7:30am and the wind is looking good for a sail. We get out things ready and help him push the small Dart 18 into the water.
It’s both a beautiful and windy morning. We aren’t too sure how long we will be going for so we pack a double dry bag of snacks and a phone for pictures. Immediately upon setting off I think that it would be cellular suicide to try take a picture now as we were all sopping.
It’s a beautiful time. We tack back and forth between the island and lodge. We talk about Gilson’s sailing career and how he’s won the multi day regatta that travels the length of the lake many times. He tells us of a time when the lake was smaller, with large beaches and people lived on the island.
We come up to the lodge again and he asks us if we’d like to go once more - yes please! This time he takes us much further, the detail of vegetation on the island comes into view and we all slip into a non speaking calm as we glide over the water.
On the way back Gilson asks me if I can steer and I excited take over from him. The wind dies off a bit and we gently cruise back home. A lovely morning.
We dry off at home and start up a game of knock knock. Jordan redeems herself by decisively beating me three times. We lounge around, writing and reading.
We hop back on the bike and cruise down the road towards Monkey Bay. We come across an empty petrol station and I almost don’t stop due to the lack of cars outside - thinking they don’t have fuel anymore. But we’re in luck, and get our first full tank since Lilongwe.
We stop off at Linda’s for lunch. Quickly run down the road to get some fabric and then sit in the shade sweating in our denim. We’re going to play a backgammon game but I succumb to the heat and suggest that we pop over to Mufasa for a swim and a change of clothes. As we pull in we see Harry the hilarious British man we met in Cape Maclear. He’s here to take the Illala tomorrow.
The water is lovely. I dive with the mask around the bay - slightly intimidated on staying too far from the beach due to the crocodile and hippos that are slightly more adapted to eating things here. Two young dutch boys swim out with their floaty bands and we look at fish together. One of them slips right onto his face (against out warnings) and the playtime is done.
I’m in a hammock. About to proofread Bovineiterology and call it done. I take a break to walk down to the nearby bay to look at some hippos and a crocodile that share the lake with us.
Dinner is a delicious vegetarian stir fry with great company.
I get quite high and Jordan takes her opportunity to destroy me in a backgammon game. The score is 4-2. We’re then lying in bed, I open up my Instagram and show Jordan what my feed looks like; we get stuck into a dirty little secret that is my love for fail videos of people hurting themselves.
We’re scrolling away - lost in the endless content and just about ready for bed.
BANG
BANG
Two gunshots ring out from seemingly just outside our room. We lie still, I have tingles all over my body. We’re quiet for a little bit and then begin questioning if that was a gunshot - the conclusion is yes. Did someone just get murdered outside? Should we just lie in bed and pretend to sleep? We lie still for a while listening, until we hear Harry’s voice with a tone that is not conducive to fearing for one’s life.
I venture out and to a little collection of people on the beach. When I ask what happened they said that a couple of crocodiles were spotted in the shallows and the crocodile rangers had arrived, walked around with head torches for a while and then waded out into the water and shot at a crocodile twice.
At this moment the ranger was getting into a small yellow canoe (the one that we had seen the hippos in a week ago) to go and search for the potentially injured crocodile. I go back to call Jordan. More people come out their rooms with similar questions. We all take a seat on the beach and begin to watch a crazy man with two assault rifles and a head torch paddle around the dark lake in a small plastic tub.
Mark - an English tourist - brings out his drone that has a large spotlight on the bottom. He flies it around for a while in search of blood or an angry crocodile, with no luck.
We sit on the beach for quite a while. There are maybe eight of us and we share a joint. It’s truly a bizarre situation. We begin to talk about the moral integrity of crocodile killing and how we feel about the whole thing. I guess I understand why the lodge would call in the rangers, as fear of a crocodile attack would ruin reputation. But then again it’s at the price of the death for a beautiful animal.
Harry wonders whether the ranger has the head torch to attract crocodiles. I suggest that it’s probably so that he could see. We all laugh. And then the head torch goes off for extended periods of time and we wonder if there was some truth in it - maybe this man can see in the dark.
BANG
Another gunshot. This time I see something trash upwards and go underwater. The ranger gets out the canoe and looks around a bit before coming in. We get the story that he had shot a crocodile on the last shot and seen blood, but that it had swum away.
There is some brief excitement about the enormous assault rifles and then we go to bed. Quite a few mosquitos join us.