Lovely Liwonde

So excited that there are elephants RIGHT behind us!

This weekend was absolutely amazing!  The Lilongwe girls – Alisha, Brittany, Mylan, and I – went to Liwonde National Park to go on safari!

We neglected to plan ahead, and found ourselves making reservations mid-week, and figuring out transportation on Friday afternoon.  Maybe not the best idea, but we managed to work it all out and have the weekend!

We left Lilongwe at 4am on Saturday, with our favourite taxi driver, Andrew.  The other girls slept and I took pictures of the beautiful sunrise over the quirky mountains of Malawi.

Such a lovely sunrise.

We pulled into the Liwonde Safari Camp at 7:15am and Andrew parked about 2 metres away from an elephant!  Marly and David, a couple who are helping the owner out, quickly ran over and got Andrew to back up before we caused an elephant stampede.  What a start to the weekend!

Carefully assessing us as we watch him eat breakfast.

THE bird hangout branch... apparently they all wanted to be on that specific one.

The tent Mylan and I shared.

We spent the morning relaxing on the property, and after lunch, headed out with another group of 4 visitors to go on a boat safari.  The boat safari was wonderful – we spent the afternoon cruising the Shire River and by my estimations, saw over 100 hippos, around 100 elephants, 10 crocodiles, various deer-type animals and birds.  It was fantastic!

Baby hippos napping on the backs of their parents.

Snoozing in the afternoon sun.

Elephants in the mud. We later walked through that area and had to avoid falling into giant holes made by their feet.

A huge herd of elephants.

The biggest croc sighting of the day.

One of the regal herons.

A white heron.

Apparently, one of the rarer to see herons.

Fish Eagles

Kingfisher - got this one for you, Dad!

We returned from the boat safari and shortly thereafter, headed out on a walking safari at dusk.  We saw some warthogs, elephants (there were two younger ones fighting!), antelope, hippos – and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!

In the evening, we had a huge buffet dinner and chatted with the other 6 visitors, Marly and David, and the owner, Frederick.  I was exhausted from the long day, and headed to bed around 9 – only to be woken up by Mylan at 12:30, when the herd of elephants returned and walked right by our raised tent!  It was so neat to look out the windows of the tent and see an elephant at eye level, only 2 feet away, ripping branches off the bushes next to us!

Peeking through the grass at us.

Warthog posing for the camera.

Bushbuck.

The younger elephants that were fighting.

Watching the elephants with our guide, Hess - the tree on the right is called a sausage tree.

Yawning hippo!

The beautiful sunset sky.

On Sunday morning, we got up nice and early again, to head out for a driving safari at 7am.  We saw many more antelope, bushbuck, impala, sable, a family of elephants, a few water buffalo, monkeys, birds, and many warthogs.

This baobab is 4000 years old, 18 metres in diameter, and 21 metres tall. The missing bits of the trunk and the large pile of manure are because the elephants like to eat the baobab wood.

Bushbuck.

Warthogs - can you spot all the babies?

Still in awe that I stood a few hundred metres from a herd of elephants!

This makes me giggle - doesn't it look like the warthog is wearing heels?

One of the monkeys we saw - pretty sure it is a yellow vervet.

Everybody's got a water buffalo...

Impala - their colouring is so beautiful, and they are extremely graceful.

The gorgeous landscape.

A sable.

Posing on the cruiser.

We spent the afternoon reading on a viewing deck, and Andrew picked us up to return to Lilongwe around 3:30pm.  Once again, I got some lovely pictures of the Malawian landscape, this time as the sun was setting.

I would definitely recommend visiting Liwonde if you ever make it to Malawi!  We were all so amazed at how many animals there were, and how easy it was to see them – all weekend, we were crazily snapping photos of the each animal, not knowing if it would be the only one we would see, and now I have over 1500 pictures to weed through!

The viewing deck.

And to finish off this lengthy post, a picture of the sun setting over the mountains.