This update is also long overdue... here - finally - are the last of the Malawi images.
After our two magical days at Liwonde, we enjoyed a two-day stopover at Satemwa Tea Estate. I felt as though we'd entered a colonial time warp! We stayed at Huntingdon House, the original 1920s Satemwa homestead, which has recently been beautifully renovated and is situated on Thyolo Mountain amidst seemingly endless tea plantations.
We arrived just as the weather was closing in, an amazing sight.
In between being wined and dined at Huntingdon by our wonderful hosts and enjoying a peaceful interlude away from the chaos of Malawi's roads (this warrants a post in its own right!), we explored parts of the estate, a vast expanse of tea fields that just seem to go on forever. Beautiful patches of green, divided into neat segments, much like below:
This is what tea leaves look like close up...
Some of the tea bushes date back to the first half of the 20th century, Satemwa being one of Malawi's oldest tea plantations.
We made a tea tasting appointment at the factory, which proved to be a surprisingly insightful experience. I for one had no idea of what's involved in the art of making tea!
While down Thyolo way, we drove over to Mulanje to catch a glimpse of Mount Mulanje, an impressive massif with a plateau the size of a small European country (by which I don't mean the obvious). This is by all accounts a hiker's paradise. We didn't have time to skip up the mountain unfortunately - maybe next time.
And that's it for Malawi! We spent our last night back in Lilongwe, dissecting and digesting all the information we'd gathered over the last week and deciding on an itinerary. It's due to be uploaded to our site any day now so watch this space.
Next on the clickety click agenda: Namibia!
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