If you follow me on Instagram (which you should!) you would know that I took a much needed trip to Malawi (the warm heart of Africa) last week. I travelled with 3 of my friends to see the country and more importantly to attend the annual Lake of Stars Festival. I’ve been travelling to Malawi for a while now, I’ve been there 5 times since 2007 and it was my 2nd time at the festival. So actually I don’t consider myself a tourist when I’m there, it’s more like visiting family that I haven’t seen in a while.

The first few days were spent in Blantyre, there we did a bit of eating out, shopping, checking out the night life…

One of my favourite shopping outings were to the fabric shop where there was thousands of different prints to choose from at such reasonable prices. I liked it so much, I was pretty much there nearly everyday we were in Blantyre, we kept on having to go back to buy more material. I had to restrict myself from buying a whole lot of stuff.

After spending some time in the city, we drove to Monkey Bay which was going to be out base while at Lake of Stars. We took advantage of being lakeside and went to a place I hadn’t been before (yay!) Cape Maclear. There you find the most clearest water I have ever seen in my life and that part of the lake is filled with so many tropical fish, there were so pretty and colourful. We took a boat ride to different islands close to Cape Maclear, our skippers were the best, we got to feed the tropical fish and we were also treated to fish eagles swooping into the water to catch the fish that we had thrown in for them – it was exactly like in that Fish Eagle (the brandy) ad on TV.

The Lake of Stars festival was held at the Sunbird Nkopola Lodge in Mangochi – everything is held on the shores of the lake on the beach. We could only attend the festival on Friday night, it was the best night IMO in terms of performances, so I wasn’t too bummed. We got to see Toya Delazy and Uhuru performing and it was so much fun, especially the Uhuru guys, they had us shaking out booties!

Side track: One of my all time favourite ads on TV is the Amarula ad with Alek Wek – I love it to bits! Especially the part where she says: It’s an African original, like me! Watch the ad below and read a bit more of my story after.

So anyway, whenever I travel (especially in Africa) I love buying a bottle of Amarula at the Duty Free Shop at the airport so I can do my African Original shot wherever I am in the world 🙂 – it’s just one of those things in life that bring a lot of joy. So here is my Malawi 2015 African Original moment.

I also made a very amateur video of us feeding the fish at Cape Maclear. We threw in bread pieces into the water to attract the fish. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/uX2FiwY_s7o