Flying Adventure: Southern Africa – Day 3 (FQVL – FWCL – FWCM):

Vilanculo to Beira

We are leaving Mozambique today for Malawi, the “Warm Heart of Africa”. Our first flight will take us along the Indian ocean coastline towards Beira, then over the Mozambique interior to the Zambezi river, and through the mountainous southern part of Malawi to Chileka Blantyre. From Blantyre it will be a relatively short flight up to Club Makokola on the southern shores of Lake Malawi.

We depart in beautiful weather from Vilanculos and route up the shore line towards Beira.

Beira to Chileka Blantyre

From Beira, the weather starts turning a bit unpleasant. Drizzle, rain and thick widespread clouds are building up at about 2000 feet.

This area up to southern Malawi has been hit terribly hard by cyclone Idai earlier in the month. The weather we experience towards the Malawi border is likely the remainder of this tropical cyclone. The flooding, damages and sad casualties Idai has brought to the region are still clearly visible.

It also means that any landing strips on our route are flooded and not usable. In the prevailing weather, this pushes us into a somewhat tighter spot. As the weather moves behind us, a safe return to Beira is soon no longer possible.

As we get to the Zambezi river, the rain cells intensify. The clouds over the mountain range into Malawi are far too low for a safe passage. We can however see upwards along the Zambezi and reckon that Tete airport should be a potential alternate destination to divert to. Luckily, as we circumnavigate a cell of heavy rain, we spot a passage through the mountains into Malawi. The valley behind appears to have a somewhat clearer sky. We give it a go and identify landing options in that valley which we could safely reach. One of which we fly over to inspect, appears usable. That offers some relief.

Flying through the valley up north and around the cloud covered mountains, we safely reach Blantyre Chileka. Blantyre, although the commercial capital of Malawi, is a quiet airport and besides a Ukrainian cargo plane, we are the only aircraft and people on the field. Customs, immigration and flight plan filing is thus a smooth and easy process. People certainly honour their reputation of being warm, friendly and helpful.

Chileka to Club Makokola

We call our destination for the local weather, which appeared in order, re-fuel and take off for our last leg up to the lake. Flying a straight line is again not possible due to some heavy storm cells on the way. The poor people in this area are still not spared of heavy rains after cyclone Idai.

Keeping to the east of the direct route, we fly along Lake Malombe and head up to Nkopola on the southern shores of Lake Malawi.

We are staying over at the Makokola Retreat for the night. Club Makokola, has its own landing strip, which is very convenient. We can park the plane, walk over into reception for check-in and head down to the chalet at the beach.

This landing strip has a public road crossing over it and is not fully fenced off. Whilst the people move to the side as we fly over and approach for landing, the goats grassing on the runway seemingly have a somewhat sluggish reaction time. But as they eventually give way and run off to the side and with still about half the runway left, we can safely line up and touch down, without a go around.

This rounds off a day of beautiful flying and challenging weather with an amusing final touch down. Time for a cold beer and to relax at the beach, watching the sunset over the lake.