We managed to sneak in an impromptu safari on Sunday. Nick was looking at the driving route back from Zomba and realized that the road passed right next to Liwonde National Park, a 220 sq mile protected reserve. If you’ll remember, Liwonde is the park with the excess of elephants. They had 2250 and so far 250 have been relocated to Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve and 250 are going to Majete early next year.
Most safari operations are quite costly and require you to spend the night. Luckily, with a bit of research, we discovered Liwonde Safari Camp, a more rustic backpacker camp that’s located inside the park gates. They were more than willing to accommodate us and arranged a 2.5 hour boat safari for a little less than $100 US. And that included a guide, driver and a private boat! Wow, huh?! Here’s a peek at what our boat looked like.
The Shire River (pronounced She-Ray) runs through the park and since it’s dry season, the game tend to congregate around the river. This made for amazing viewing for us! We weren’t on the boat 5 minutes before seeing our first elephant and hippo. Just nuts how abundant the wildlife is here. There were lots of fishermen at the start of our cruise, which was technically still outside of the park boundaries. Fishing is not allowed in the park and carries a penalty of $33 or 5 years in jail. Hmmm, tough decision…which would you choose???
The fishermen use canoes that are hallowed out of a log. They are incredibly small and unstable and you couldn’t pay me enough money to get in one of those, especially with the abundance of crocodiles and hippos in the water. Our guide was telling us that in the 15 years he’d lived there, 120 fishermen had been killed while fishing (mostly from crocodiles). Yikes, huh? And get this – one of the strategies is to go near the hippos because the fish tend to be there. If you ask me, these guys are playing with fire….no thank you!
About 45 minutes into our trip we came upon this group of elephants. Note the two babies and the elephant rolling in the mud. We stopped and watched them for a long time – such a majestic animal. Can’t wait to see them up close in a 4×4 or walking safari in 2 weeks time at Majete!
Hippos were by far the most prevalent animal we saw. In our 2.5 hour trip, I’d estimate that we saw 100 of them. They were always in groups of two or more and the largest group we saw had around 30. Some of them got really close to the boat too! And they made the strangest bellowing sound!
I managed to capture one of them opening his mouth. So very cool to see! Finally, here is a male bushbuck we saw. I was so grateful that he was willing to pose for me! After wrapping up our safari we enjoyed lunch back at camp and then hopped in the car for the 3 hour trip back to Lilongwe. All in all, a stellar weekend! To view all of the pictures from our trip, CLICK HERE!
