Nkhota Kota: Swimming with Crocodiles

Alright, so that title might be a little misleading.  Yes, we did swim in Lake Malawi, and yes, there are crocodiles in the lake.  But Lake Malawi is a really big lake, and when I asked the local kids swimming with us about crocodiles they just said "very far away".  Fr. Andrew took us for the first trip, and on the way we stopped at a sight where an old railroad track went right into the lake.  It was the docking point for ships in the slave trade so that was interesting.  Another time, we were dropped of at a resort nearby and spent the entire day.  It must have been the off season because there were very few people there.  We did meet a man from Germany who moved to Zimbabwe to start a Safari company.  He advised us to walk the beach to check out some rocks further down and meet the locals...so we did.  We knew the road followed the lake and we were planning on catching the minibus anyways so we packed up our things and started walking.    There were people washing there clothes, fixing their fishing nets, and setting out into the lake in dugout canoes.  Some of the kids would follow us, clothed and otherwise, some asking for money and others asking us to take there picture which they loved.  They would huddle together in front of the camera and pose in something like a karate stance.  When we needed to get back to the main road we had a few of the kids lead the way which turned into a few more kids leading the way until there we were surrounded by an entire herd.  It took awhile but we finally figured out where we were going and managed to convince the kids not to follow us anymore.  It was still a long hike to the road so on the way we bought some sugar cane from stand on the side of the road and caught a ride back to Nkhota Kota.  On another trip, we saw what looked to me like a full sized tornado on the other side.  It was calm where we were and it was far away so we just shrugged it off and kept on swimming.  Most of the beaches were really nice and I the weather was perfect so I didn't understand why there weren't more tourists.  I asked one of the workers and he said they get a lot of people coming from England, but most of them come in June.