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Published: October 27th 2008
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Liwonde is about 1 hour north of Zomba. The national park is some 540 square kilometres stretched along the side of the shire (pronounced shiray) river. The Shire originates at Lake Malawi and drains into the Zambezi. Liwonde itself is a small town located at the barrage which regulates the flow of the Shire further south. Several small villages are located along the Lower Shire and a couple of weeks ago the press reported that a small girl had been taken by a crocodile from its banks. Apparently this is fairly unusual but not unheard of; but fishermen who fish in the river in small dugout canoes often suffer accidents with the crocodiles and lose an arm or a leg in the process.
Sue and Gareth decided to camp in the park on Friday night and Steph and I, favouring the luxury of a lodge bed, travelled up on Saturday morning in a small minibus. Minibuses work here like many other places in the world, they have predetermined routes and leave as soon as they are full, stopping and starting anywhere along the road where people want to get off or jump on. The price is generally known. The fare
and any change is exchanged silently often working its way from the back through passenger intermediaries, to the ‘conductor’, with no fuss or circumstance, it doesn’t happen as soon as you are seated but the transaction occurs somewhere on route and the change inevitably returns a little later.
Matawali, our area of Zomba, lies about 2 km north of Zomba town on the road towards Lilongwe; which passes via Liwonde; so we only needed to walk to the Matawali junction about 10 minutes amble (which is generally all one can manage in the heat) away and catch the first bus going north. We started off in the back but after our first stop and few hundred meters along the road the conductor decided I would be better off in the front. So I found myself sandwiched between the driver and a railway business man from Lilongwe who chatted amiably for the whole journey, telling me about the train routes around Malawi (there are only three) and asking about the difference between psychology and philosophy which made a nice change from psychiatry and asked how long it took me to read someone’s mind. On arrival in Liwonde bus station Steph and
I were naturally accosted by various hawkers of Samosas and Mendasi (deep fried Ufa or maize flour balls which with a bit of cinnamon sugar would be rather lovely) and offered bicycle taxis to the barrage. We walked once we had determined which direction it was, and then realised that we could have stayed on the bus another 5 minutes and saved ourselves from the heat of the sun. As it as we ended up walking back over the river again and finding that the ½ hour walk we had just done was unnecessary since the river boat was going from more or less where we had started out, but by that time we would have expired had we tried to walk back a third time so fortunately the boat was hailed over to us.
The boat upriver was absolutely beautiful; within moments we were taking photos of hippos and then elephants and admiring the view. The trip took us about an hour before we arrived at Mvuu camp, where we were given lunch and shown our chalet, which could probably be best described as African chique. It was lovely actually, it was a large A-frame, rock wall and
wood structure with a tented fabric covering over the top, but around all the walls above hip height the windows had mosquito mesh and white muslin curtains to allow air to circulate around without letting the bugs in. It had two bedrooms; one at the back with two single beds, then the shower / wet-room with a decent hot shower in it (which we don’t have at home) and the front room had two double beds with front poster mosquito net arrangements over them, a comfy chair, and a small child’s bed. There was a veranda out front which looked straight out onto the river about 5 or 10 meters away, and when we arrived there was a pod, sorry a raft, of hippos splashing about just in front of us.
Henry, our guide took us out on our first game drive at about 3:30 in the afternoon, returning us for dinner at about 7pm. I also went on a walking safari at 5:30 am and we all went out again with Henry in a small slow boat along the river after breakfast. The wildlife is incredibly dense; warthogs were wondering around the camp as were baboons and were
Makanga
The oldest Elephant in the park so prolific I don’t think I even took a photo. There were herds of waterbuck, distinctive by their white ring around their bottoms, impala, bush buck and kudu. It is the tail end of the dry season so all the animals are easily seen on the banks of the river where the only water is to be found. There were large female and bachelor herds of elephants, with 20 or even thirty animals in a herd. We saw the bachelor herd of the oldest (Makanga) and the largest (who hasn’t yet attracted a name) male elephants in the park. We saw two hyenas out hunting after dark.
My morning guide scooped up a handful of wet mud from a live termite mound and showed us the termites inside. He explained that when the mound reaches visibility on the ground, the size of a mole hill scientists have worked out that it has been living for about 5 years. A full size termite mound is about twice the size below the ground as above and takes around 30 years to build. The mound can ‘live’ for about 120 years. Apparently the termites burrow through the soil mixing their saliva with
the earth creating some kind of fungus which is the food for the king and queen termite. Often the kudu and even elephants use the mounds to reach succulent leaves on trees.
The collective noun for Warthogs I discovered is a sounder of warthogs and as mentioned earlier someone in their infinite wisdom has renamed a pod of hippos and they are now known as a raft of hippos. We saw a raft of hippos mourning a dead one, opening and closing their mouths and prodding its feet with their snout. We saw a couple of crocodiles and one frighteningly large one basking in the sun. There were all kinds of birds, fish eagles, malachite and pied kingfishers, vultures purple breasted louries and many many others I don’t remember the names of, in all sizes and colours. The highlight for me was coming across a monitor lizard stealing and eating crocodile eggs on the bank of a river, that and the hippos popping their heads above the water to see where the strange boat noise was coming from and then popping back down again one by one as we approached.
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Jane
non-member comment
Hefalump
I thought they were mythical- not a real animal.....