Safari

The elephant carcass is behind the cub.

If she looks scary here, try being 15 feet away.  That's the elephant's hind leg.

Hyena

Puku

Wild dog pack

Lilongwe

 

The drive to Lilongwe felt pretty quick.  We left at 6:30 and the roads were pretty empty.  Danny drove us again (the same guy that brought us in on that terrifying ride) but there weren’t many people around so it wasn’t nearly as frightening that he was going to run over someone.  The car did overheat once but we just pulled over for a while and then everything seemed to be fine.  He dropped us at the Kiboko hotel which is very nice indeed.  They have a beautiful indoor/outdoor restaurant where the food is very good and reasonable by azungu standards and a lovely second floor lounge with lots of cushioned seats, pillows, and cool breezes blowing through.  They even have internet (not free) though I didn’t have anything  ready to post.  The kids were most excited about having a TV in the room.  There was only 5 channels, but one of them was Discovery which kept them glued to the screen.  This will be our launching point for a safari into the South Luongwa National Forest in Zambia which leaves first thing tomorrow morning. 

 

Safari

 

The safari was definitely a highlight of our experience here.  I never dreamed that it would be as wonderful as it was.  Our safari was very reasonably priced and was far from luxurious and so it attracted a certain clientele with whom we made quick connections.  We were the only Americans.  There were also Dutch, British, French, Irish, Scottish, Bulgarian and Italian among 20 people.  We spent around 6 ½ hours in a landrover type vehicle to get to the camp.  We had to stop at the border to check out of Malawi (paperwork and lines) and check in to Zambia (paperwork, lines and $50 each cash).  We also had to stop in a little town and switch over a bunch of bags and people between buses and landrovers.  There was a two hour drive on an unpaved very, very dusty red road, much of it was washboard. 

 

We were very relieved to arrive at the camp.  It consisted of 10 tent cabins all in two rows perpendicular to the river that acts as the border to the park.  In and across the river we could see hippo and crocodiles.  There was an “ablutions” building with flush toilet and delightfully hot showers.  We ate under a canopy along the river.  There was also a bar 100 yards from the camp and a swimming pool.  All in all, it was really nice. 

 

The safari starts when they wake all of us up at 5:00 AM and we have a light (very light) breakfast at 5:30.  We then load up into typical open landrover safari vehicles for a four hour drive. (There was a tea break about half way through.)  We are back at the camp at 10:00 AM.  Lunch at 11:30 and then we are free until 3:30 when we have tea and a snack before loading up again for another 4 hour drive.  It gets dark at 6:00 so the last two hours are in the dark with one of the guides scouring the bush with a spotlight. 

 

We saw it all!  I am really, really quite amazed.  And the guides would drive right up to the wildlife. (No one would allow this sort of thing in National Parks in the US and I felt some judgments about whether it was good for the animals, but it was very exciting.)  One of the things that we saw only 45 minutes or so into the first day was a dead elephant (dead for 2 days or so) being fed upon by a group of female lions and cubs.  The trucks pulled nearly as close as they could get (the elephant smelled quite bad) and the lions paid us almost no attention at all.  We have lots of good (and somewhat gruesome) pictures.  The guide’s best guess about the elephant’s fate it that it had crossed the river and had gone into the village looking for food and was destroying things so the villagers shot it.  It still had its tusks so it didn’t appear to be poached and the guide could see a bullet would with an entrance and exit site.  He figured that the elephant had been shot but hadn’t died until it got back to the park.  It was very, very sad.  The elephants were definitely among my favorite animals in the park.  We had many experiences with them including being charged by a male (the guide says that it was just a mock charge) and a whole herd of them (8-9) quietly walking through the whole camp one afternoon.  They stopped at the entrance to the tents, looked around a little and then went a different way.  Annie had gone to the bathroom (maybe 50 yards from the tents) and when she came out they were between her and the tents so she just had to wait it out over there.  Luckily, there was someone from the campsite beside us who could stay with her. 

 

Rather than talking too much about the safari I will just post a bunch of pictures.  I do want to say a word about the people who were on the safari with us.  About 80% of us were in Malawi as volunteers or doing projects.  It was so wonderful to talk to everyone about the work that they had been doing, their awarenesses and understandings about Africa and African culture, and our mutual delight in interacting with the people of Africa. 

 

The only downside of the safari was that it was exhausting!  8 hours bouncing around in a Land Rover and then not being very physically active in between times because there really wasn’t much to do.  By the time we got back to the hotel afterward we were really glad to be out of the car. 

 

But, alas!  We were doomed to get back in the car the next day for a trip to the Mulanje area, around full day in the car.  : (