Cape Mclear, 5 April 07: Deep-water bouldering and 30p bottles of beer
by Lianna
We
desperately needed a few days to recover from the alcoholic excesses of Lilongwe,
and where better to do that than Cape McLear, a working fishing village stuck
on the very tip of a small peninsula that juts out into southern Lake Malawi.
Soft sand beaches with bars and palm trees, next to crystal waters home
to more fish species than you’ll find anywhere else in Africa –
all the trimmings of a bounty-advert life. The beaches are lined with hundreds
of working fishing boats, most no more than balsa-wood struts tied together
with banana leaves, home to a single fisherman skilfully balancing the boat
as he paddles with a small wooden plate in each hand. One street back from
the beach, makeshift buildings and corrugated iron lean-tos far outnumber
the bricks. We wandered, relaxed, through the market streets with small children
attached to us, choosing between the too-numerous invitations to drink locally
grown tea in cafés and houses. Everything reflects a typical image
of African life. It’s a near-perfect romance of an easy-living beach
paradise, with the culturally interesting backdrop of a working village. Even
the stray dogs that spend their lives patrolling the beach are cute.
It’s nearly perfect, but not quite. But you’d deceive yourself to ignore the less attractive side of Cape McLear. The neediness, the naked malnourished potbellies of kids, the subtle but undeniable odour of rotting fish and rotting seaweed permeating the still air, that even the beachfront tourist establishments can’t escape. Wandering, relaxed, through the market, you find it doesn’t sell anything. Nothing but small dried fish, a few bruised tomatoes, and white root vegetables – manioc and cassava – which are generally eaten undercooked or raw, in which state they are poisonous, due to the lack of firewood. This does little to help the 38yr life expectancy of Malawians… and further contributing to this is the high incidence of Bilharzia in the lake. The village drinks, bathes and plays in the infected water. So do the tourists, but the simple popping of a pill, a cheap and available (to us) western-style drug, will deny that fluke the chance to damage.
With
the stray dogs wander stray children, playing around the adults, mostly men,
that spend all day sat on the beach, taking khat, chagga or snuff, or drinking
the favourite local tipple, Shake-Shake, a millet beer bought in 2-litre tetra-packs
and kept warm enough to ferment inside.
But for all this, Cape McLear is a great place. And what it has in abundance (besides aid workers and missionaries) is smiles. Smiles and rock. So enough of the social commentary... Between the waterskiing, sunbathing, sea kayaking, snorkelling, eating imported pizzas, drinking imported beers, and wandering around the town trying to understand it, we climbed.
Following the river inland, we found a valley full of rough granite boulders.
We paid a high price in sweat – bush bashing through thick undergrowth
to get there, then often excavating them from beneath complex arrays of intertwined
vines and fig-tree roots. But it was worth it. We’ve taken to calling
these boulders the Malawian Buttermilks – a huge boulder-strew expanse
that could take years to develop, with its great high-ball bouldering on solid
granite with good landings. Plenty of boulders were large enough for routes,
so we soloed the easier ones and left the trickier ones, gearless as they
were, for harder climbers or a Hilti drill. Spending a day playing on these,
before wandering back to camp for a swim in the lake and a 30p bottle of ice-cold
beer. Now that’s heaven!
And the next day brought even better things. Having hired a skipper and his
boat, we set about exploring the shores of the mainland and several nearby
islands, all of which are extensively lined with clean granite boulders falling
away into a deep, blue, 
warm
lake. Deep-water bouldering! We travelled along about 20km of shore doing
this, climbing then falling off, climbing then jumping off, traversing then
swimming, just swimming, snorkelling, sitting in the sun.
We found one boulder rising a good 15m out of the water, a massive cube with sharp arêtes, scary faces, and a gentle slope on one side that some of us (not me…) scrambled up to jump off the steepest side. And the whole boulder was covered in crimpy incuts, and was generally solid (although Pete still managed to pull off a flake the size of a small car!) Next to the Cube was a boulder that would be at home between the peaks of Skeleton Ridge. Looking like a sharks tooth, incredibly narrow, its one serrated ridge running rapidly up to a sharp point, before dropping quickly back into the water on the other side.
We eventually made it back to camp. We skipped the swim that day, but still enjoyed ice-cold 30p bottles of beer. And it’s good that we made the most of this luxury before we headed away from the beaches and towards our last stop in Malawi – Mt. Mulanje.
