Sun 16th & Mon 17th Oct – Alcon Cottages, Monkey Bay
Scuba Diving distances
Around Monkey Bay & Cape Maclear – 89km
After leaving the islands of Domwe and Mumba, we headed back to the mainland and Alcon Cottages for 2 nights. We did 3 SCUBA dives in Cape Maclear. It was the first time either of us had dived in fresh water and conditions made it really easy and comfortable – still, clear water and a pleasant 24C temperature meant we had little to be concerned about and could just enjoy what we were seeing. All our dives were shallow and often we just dropped a couple of metres to a sandy patch at no point did we drop below 15m … there was no need to as there’s something to see right from the surface all the way down.
There were fish everywhere as we drifted through the still water, exploring crevasses amongst the massive boulders that seemed to tumble down into the darkness below. Mouthbrooding cichlids gulped up a hundred of their own offspring to protect them from us and large, silver catfish guarded their own young that were tucked in the overhang of a rock. In the shallow sandy patches, other larger cichlids, called chando, had created large nesting hollows so it looked like a giant mbao board (a traditional African game a bit like mankala) on the lakebed.
We created a photo and video montage of the highlights from our dives and would absolutely recommend Rob and Freddie at Cape Maclear SCUBA (Cape Maclear Scuba: Home page) for anyone interested in really exploring Lake Malawi.
JC
Don’t forget to stay up to date with their adventure we will be adding regular updates to this page, but you can also follow along on Facebook, Instagram and through our YouTube playlist.