Woke up too early for how many beers I'd had last night but just couldn't sleep any longer. It was another beautiful day so we dragged ourselves down to the beach and recovered through more swimming and sunning. We assuaged our guilt over choosing to laze in the sun by turning in our laundry on our way - so at least we accomplished something this morning (or paid someone to accomplish something). After a couple hours in the sun we went into the bar to borrow a travel guide, have some cold drinks and do some more planning. With the time we have we could definitely make it through Zambia to Victoria Falls - but it would be tight and any foul-ups would result in us having to do three or four back to back long travel days. We still need to get some first hand knowledge.
In the early afternoon we wandered in to town. We tried once again to book a dive but no one was at the dive shop. Had a huge lunch (it was supposed to be a late breakfast, but was more likely a very early dinner). After eating we tried the dive shop again - there was still no one. We wandered around the central market and Amy bought some wax print fabric and had a sarong made. We also wandered through the fish market down on the harbor, and bought water in the supermarket. Tried to browse the many crafts stalls, but most of them had close for the afternoon. Hit the dive shop again and finally managed to organize a dive for tomorrow. Walked back to Mayoka Village (our camp) and watched the sunset. We decided to check out the resident carver's wares and Amy ended up buying a very nice bao board.
We spent the rest of the evening with borrowed guide books and worked out a couple tentative itineraries. Talking to the dive guy and one of the owners of our camp we realized that the islands (Chizumulu and Likoma) are both doable and worth doing so we're going to stay in Nkhata Bay until Tuesday night and take the ferry to Chizumulu. We'll stay there and / or on Likoma until we catch the return ferry back to Nkhata late Saturday. After that we can either head to Vwaza or Lilongwe - depending on our inclination and how the bus schedules work out. Zambia will have to wait for another trip. We then played a very long game (two plus hours) of bao on Amy's new board - she won.
