Shohini 3

We woke up relatively early the next day to leave for Senga Bay. We reached Salima which was a small little town. It was cute but there really wasn't much. I was expecting a bit more since we had read somewhere that Salima was kind of a bustling city but all we saw was a smaller, less spread out version of Lilongwe. We went onwards to Senga Bay and it took forever to find our resort since we had through the dirt road. We eventually found it and it was an amazing view. The lake was multiple colors of blue and the waters were shining. It took my breath away. There were a lot of locals on the beach and few people in the resort. But we settled into our bat smelling, disgustingly mosquito infested rooms and left with our sunblocks on to sit out in the sun. After a while since I was getting really bored, Becca came with me to play beach volleyball. We were joined by a bunch of kids who came for their summer holidays. It was fun playing with them and we were later joined by a couple of South Asian men from Lilongwe. The kids left after a while and so did we since we were kind of playing ridiculously atrociously and I was so hot I just wanted to jump into the lake which is what Becca and I did. I waded pretty far out but the lake was pretty flat. After a while, Becca left the water at which point Tanya joined me and we went pretty far out. There were dead fishes in the lake which creeped me out but we still decided to stay for a while. Just when we were coming out, a bunch of kids who were playing with a huge tree in the lake decided to leave and we decided to go canoeing on that log. It's not as easy as it looks; balance and strength are essential attributes as well as a tolerance for pain since we kept scratching every part of our bodies. It was too entertaining though. After a while, we came off at which point we noticed Becca and Kim looking at batiks and paintings. There were some really beautiful paintings but I thought they weren't bargaining enough which was what Tanya was thinking as well. So I decided to buy one and got the price to go down. Each of our paintings totaled to about $10 which was pretty cool. So we decided to go into town for a little while. On the way we saw a really nice crafts market so we d we'd stop on our way back. We went in there to look and before I knew it, I was bargaining, bringing down prices of two things from 3000 MK to 500 MK and I bought it. I thought it was a pretty good buy. We had heard that we could trade things which we didn’t have at the moment, so we decided to come back the following day. (P.S. the whole trading thing did NOT go so well and they ended up catching our bluff about the prices of these "American" goods). So we returned and decided to sit out on the beach for a while (dousing ourselves with Odomos a.k.a mosquito repellent). We tried to talk to the reception about the fact that there were bats in our room but the man claimed that they leave at dusk which was an utter lie. So on the way back, we met the Sri Lankan man who owned the restaurant and told him about the fact that it was Tanya's birthday and we wanted good Sri Lankan food. He said he would try and cook as well as he could which he did. He was also watching ICC twenty20 which was so much fun since India won (against Bangladesh) and Australia lost (against W.I.). Holla!!! Anyway, we watched the game eating great Sri Lankan food and being creeped on by some man. Whatever...we reached the room and only got more freaked out but after a while I was over it. For some reason I kept waking up throughout the night and finally at 4:45am woke up to watch the sunrise which didn't actually rise till about 5:45. But the colors before the actual sunrise was beautiful and totally worth it. No pictures or words can really describe the view but it was picturesque with shades of red and pink with a distant island which was completely black because of no light and a lone boat floating. The world stood still in awe of what takes place every morning but is one of the most spectacular views and invocation of feelings. I officially didn't want to leave.