Steve’s research into flights quickly showed us that Ethiopian Airlines were going to be by far and away the cheapest. Not only that, but they seem to fly to more destinations so we wanted to try them, in the hope we’d like them, and use them regularly in the future. Going to Addis Ababa via Kigali (Rwanda) may not be the most direct route but like I say cost was the key issue here. The change over in Addis was smooth enough and our luggage actually reached Lilongwe at the same time as we did. It cost us less than $1000 for 2 people to fly Entebbe to Lilongwe via Addis Ababa and we’ll return to Entebbe from Johannesburg again via Ethiopia.
We were fortunate enough to be on the correct side of the plane to take in the journey’s highlight – a view of Kilimanjaro poking through the clouds. Plus we could see Mount Meru too and reckon we’ll have a go at that one sometime in the near future. Anyway to this holiday!
Lilongwe
The capital city of Malawi hasn’t got a great deal to offer the tourist and it’s not a very exciting or attractive place. Steve had reserved us a room in Sunset Lodge in town so that we were near the bus station and our route out for the following morning. A taxi from the airport is quite steep at $35 but there’s little alternative so we had to pay the man. To be fair he earned his fare; he duly took us to the lodge but really didn’t want us to stay there, as he said it wasn’t safe for the white man. I don’t know about safety but the place looked exceedingly shabby and a royal rip-off at $30 a night. The driver said he knew a good backpackers place and it was actually one that Steve had looked at but was located on the outskirts of town. However, we chose to take the taxi driver’s advice.
Mabuya Camp turned out to be just the ticket with a mix of accommodation on offer; we chose the simple A-frame twin-bed chalets, with shared facilities, at Kwacha 8650 ($25) a night. There were quite a few people staying but the place had 3 loo blocks and many people were self-catering so the restaurant didn’t get too busy. The menu was extremely limited and to be honest not very good value at $5 for a smallish plate of rice and beans. Luckily it wasn’t all that far to a shopping complex so we walked down to stock up on breakfast and picnic supplies. The next day we chose to walk the couple of kilometres back to town to catch the bus. http://www.mabuyacamp.com/index.php
Finding the bus station was easy enough and we tracked down the Blantyre via Zomba bus with the help of some locals pointing us in the right direction. We hopped aboard, found a couple of seats together and reckoned that since it was 9.50am, pretty full and engine idling we’d soon be on our way. Oh how wrong you can be – 2 hours later we finally bumped our way out of the bus station to then promptly go to the petrol station. Well if he hadn’t wasted 2 hours’ worth of fuel already …… Anyway we finally left town and once we were on our way we enjoyed the journey through some lovely scenery. This southern part of Malawi is much more mountainous than say the bulk of Kenya or Tanzania and in fact we crossed over one rocky boulder strewn ridge.
Liwonde
The driver was very helpful and dropped us at the junction for the national park rather than in town. Even before we’d managed to step off the bus we were pounced upon by people offering us transport to Liwonde National Park. However, Malawi is much poorer than somewhere like Uganda so the local transport isn’t motorbike taxis (boda bodas) but bicycles. There was no way they were going to be able to peddle two overweight westerners down a dirt track with full rucksacks on backs! And did they really think we’d fork out Kw3000 to sit on the back of a pushbike when the bus had only cost Kw2500?! In fact all we needed was access to a phone as we knew Liwonde Safari Camp offered a free pick up service. Steve popped into the garage and quarter of an hour later we were on our way to that night’s accommodation. http://www.liwondesafaricamp.com/
As we neared the camp, Frederick the Dutch owner, told us it was time to look out for elephants. After our recent, not so successful wildlife experiences in India we both took this with a pinch of salt. However, we had to swallow our words as within 5mins of being in camp we saw a herd of elephants from the sunset observation deck. An exciting start to what proved to be a great place to stay; Steve had pre-booked a tent for a couple of nights but we instantly knew we’d be staying 3! Liwonde Safari Camp has an excellent set up with large, new tents set up off the ground on a wooden platform. It was a little on the pricey side at $45 a night considering that didn’t include breakfast and it was shared facilities. That said amenities were excellent and using the dorm or your own tent would make the experience much more affordable. The open honesty system bar simply had to be frequented; we did have sunset with pachyderms to cater for! Plus the restaurant served up a limited menu that was reasonably priced ($8 per meal) considering the quality of the food and our location.
It had to be early to bed as we’d booked ourselves onto the morning guided walk starting at 6.30am. We’d been promised tea and coffee would be ready by 6am and we weren’t going to miss out on a warm brew. The walk only lasted about an hour and a half and we didn’t actually move that far away from the camp but, it was only $5 a head and our guide was excellent at spotting and naming the birds for us. It turned out we were effectively in the national park’s buffer zone and up until a couple of years ago the camp had been outside the electric fence. However, the people running the camps in the area persuaded the government to move the fence back to encompass their properties. This meant that we had the chance of spotting animals at any time but we liked the laid back attitude. Basically you moved around at your own risk but were warned that the big beasts like elephants and hippos are regularly seen within the camp. We believed them – we’d seen the hefalumps not 200m in the distance the previous evening plus there was plenty of poo evidence.
The first day’s activity might have been over by as early as 8am but just sitting on the observation decks and wandering around the camp was great. The birdlife is prolific and even armed with bird book and binoculars we struggled to name more than a handful of species. The highlight was seeing a Pel’s fishing owl and brown snake eagle in the same tree but we also saw; black stork, spur-winged goose, Burchell’s coucal, pied & woodland kingfisher, Bohm’s & little bee-eater, lilac breasted roller, African paradise flycatcher, red-backed shrike, blue waxbill, African and red-billed hornbills, African fish eagle, long-billed crombec, collared palm thrush, dark-capped bulbul and African darter. How many of those we would instantly recognise on seeing them again remains to be seen!
For those of you who are more interested in furred, hoofed beasts you’ll not be disappointed but there aren’t the vast herds of animals here like in other areas. Unfortunately Malawi has suffered almost disastrously at the hands of poachers over the years and it’s taking a huge concerted effort by national parks and game reserves to protect what’s left. Many species were actually hunted to extinction but there are parks in the process of reintroducing those animals that should be here. We wish them heaps of luck as it’s going to be a long and often frustrating project. The plus side to going on a jeep safari in this part of the world is that you don’t have to share the experience with hundreds of other jeeps. We know – we went on safari that very afternoon and we were the only vehicle in the park. Plus it only costs $10 a head entrance fee and the camp charged $25 each for the jeep safari.
The park itself is lovely with the huge Shire River running through it – the water is quite low at this time of year making the surrounding area too boggy for the jeep. The rock like things in the water moved so they must have been hippos but it wasn’t a conclusive sighting. As we were driving along the open plains and through the wooded areas we constantly saw animals and birds. The nice thing about this game drive was that we did stop to look at the feathered as well as the furred creatures. There are too many times when the focus is just on one animal (Asia) or they only really look for the big 5 (Africa). Within the park boundaries we only saw one more elephant but we saw plenty of other animals and at very regular intervals. We saw; warthog, bush buck, vervet monkeys, chacma baboons, impala, waterbuck, kudu and ground squirrels. In fact we saw most of these animals within the camp area along with water and slender mongoose too.
That night’s elephant experience was somewhat different. A few hours after dark we heard the villagers shouting and the dogs were furiously barking. Then we heard the unmistakable sound of an elephant trumpeting – it had popped into the crop area for a snack but obviously wasn’t welcome. The villagers scared it back towards the national park and in fact right through the gateway near our camp. Our perturbed, peckish pachyderm plodded straight through the middle of camp and promptly began feasting on a clump of trees. The elephant can only have been about 50m away from our tent and we kept watch hoping it would walk through a patch of bright moonlight. No such luck but it was a pretty exciting experience.
The next day we walked the 15kms round trip into town as we’d almost exhausted the camp’s menu and we were craving rice. Having lived in Asia for so long we find it difficult to go more than a couple of days without a rice based meal! Town is reputedly the 10th largest in Malawi but it feels more like the size of Wolsingham with the population of Glossop. It was market day so noise and colour abound. All-in-all a most enjoyable start to our first trip to Southern Africa and we can’t recommend Liwonde Safari Camp and a jeep ride in the national park highly enough.
