From Mbeya, we caught a ‘coastal’ bus to the Malawian border. Curiously, the buses don’t go all the way and so one needs to walk the last stretch. Local boys with bicycles offer a service whereby they will ride you and your luggage to the border for a fee. As usual, there was so much nonsense with touts grabbing bags, etc. from the bus as we disembarked that we decided to go it alone on foot; although in the midday sun, this probably wasn’t our finest decision to date.

Arriving at the border, we were greeted by lots of ‘helpful’ illegal money changers who wanted to give us ‘a best rate’ to convert our Tanzanian Shillings to Malawian Kwacha. Squiffy was half-drawn, worried that we’d soon have no opportunity to change our money — the Shilling is a closed currency and export is illegal! Common sense prevailed, however, as I reckoned that there must be a foreign exchange office at the border. There was, and the rate was nearly thirty percent better than the faux-money changers.

A couple of passport-stamps later and we found ourselves in Malawi, “the warm heart of Africa”. We took a shared-taxi to the nearest town of a reasonable size and decided to retry another mid-range hotel, given that last night’s attempt at a quality hotel in Mbeya turned out so dismally.

The Lonely Planet states that the Club Marina in Karonga is an “excellent, upmarket place” with “classy chalets”. Escape the City would describe it as “looks nice enough from the outside, but the overpriced rooms are dim and very disappointing. The bathrooms are grotty and its taps have no water in them. The two receptionists are the rudest, grumpiest duo with whom we’ve had the displeasure of dealing, certainly on a par with the miserable train ticket saleswomen in Barcelona. The barman and restaurant waiter did make an effort though.”

When it comes to accommodation, we mostly pick budget offerings. When we pay little, we expect little. But when we pay more, our expectations suitably follow. For two nights now, we’ve lucked-out with expensive hotels that don’t live up to their promise. It could be argued that we should’ve just moved on and tried somewhere else — and, in this case, we would have done, had we known that there was no water to be had (which was the final straw). We always look at rooms before agreeing to stay, in this case Claire had asked the receptionist whether the bathrooms had hot water, to which the answer was in the affirmative. most probably, had there had been any water at all, it would have been hot.

A while ago, we were at the beach-club area in Casablanca, Morocco, following the Lonely Planet’s description of it being “the place where the young and rich go to see, and be seen”. It was a sh–hole. At the time, I assured Claire that the authors had never even been there; Claire defended the publication. Of course, a few weeks later, the story of Thomas Kohnstamm broke. I don’t reckon that they poked their heads inside the rooms at Club Marina either. I still think that The ‘Planet is–on the whole–an valuable guide, but not invaluable. From hereon in, we’ve decided to ignore the accommodation sections almost completely. They often read a bit like a job reference from a previous employer, who is too worried to write reality for fear of legal action. Who knows, we might start writing a warts-and-all travel guide…