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Having exhausted all our cash and dignity in Lilongwe, we tried to outmanoeuvre our hangovers with a hasty retreat to Lake Malawi, which, as the name suggests, is a (big) lake in Malawi (it also borders Mozambique and Tanzania). We spent four nights on the lake’s shores: the first two on the leafy lawns of Cool Runnings – very nice – and two more at Kande Beach.

The latter remains memorable for two reasons in particular:

1) Beach boys
Not the band responsible for hits such as ‘Kokomo’ and ‘Barbara Ann’, but the local scamps who loiter on the shores of Lake Malawi making a living for themselves selling handicrafts, marijuana, or just rutting foreign ladies (with a view to a visa).

My first encounter with a beach boy came when dozing in the backseat as we pulled into Kande Beach. I awoke to a young man going by the name Kevin Costner, who, with a spattering of cockney rhyming slang, was trying to sell me weed, a tribal mask and a fishing trip. In that order. Needless to say, a very surreal experience. I even came close to buying an uninspiring ‘traditional’ African painting simply because it had been signed in the bottom right-hand corner by Mel Gibson.

2) Overland culture
While our travels through Africa were never going to lead us into the heart of darkness (though I sometimes implied they might to ensure a good leaving party and farewell gifts), I must admit that I’ve been surprised by just how many tourists we’ve encountered thus far. We’re not talking the volume that descend on Magaluf or Thailand every year, but a generous number of people who explore the continent in large overland trucks.

The culture of overland travel is increasingly big business in Africa. What started as a few people driving big Leyland trucks from Cape to Cairo, or other such routes, in search of adventure has become a highly commercialised operation (helped all the more, I imagine, by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman’s antics). Kande has long been a popular stopping point for ‘Overlanders’, as they’ve come to be known, a fact attested by the countless plaques adorning the ceiling of the resort’s bar.

This mosaic of memorabilia is interesting since it illustrates just how long Overlanders have been marauding across the continent – over 20 years – as well as reflecting Africa’s ever-changing socio-political landscape: look closely and you’ll see that Overlanders once travelled through eastern Congo, a route all but impassable today.

I found this quite an eye-opener since I had no idea that these kind of companies existed. Now that I do, I feel rather daft about the way in which I pitched our journey to my friends and family, not to mention the newspapers and magazines with whom I planned to exchange tales of swashbuckling adventure for hard cash. I now have to deal with the reality that truckloads of people (literally) have been doing this kind of thing for years. While this fact supports the prevailing theme of this blog (namely that Africa is accessible to everyone and anyone, even fools like me), it doesn’t help our pretentions of gentlemanly exploration into the unknown – especially since a worrying number of overland tours go by catchy mantles and mantras such as ‘Truck Slags’, ‘Scallys on Tour’ and ‘Go Hard or Go Home’.

A matter of time before the first 18-30 holiday reaches Africa?

Perhaps we three gentlemen explorers have entered the heart of darkness after all.