Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve, Malawi

After our week stint in Rwanda, Andrej and I hopped a 4am flight to Lilongwe, Malawi. We had a short layover in Nairobi, and the flights went well. Lilongwe is the capital of Malawi. We found a place to stay in town and spent the day resting and stocking up on supplies. We were hoping to head out to some national parks, so we bought a lot of food to take with us.

The next day, we took a bus to a town called Mzuzu, which is the nearest large town to two national parks- Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve and Nyika Plateau National Park. Without your own transport, getting to Nyika would have been very difficult and expensive. So, we opted to just go to Vwaza. We got to Mzuzu in the evening and spent just one night there before taking a minibus to a town called Rumphi. (I love the town names around here!). From Rumphi, the only we that we could find to get to the park was by matola, which is a pick-up truck. The road to the park was unpaved, and its the rainy season here. Which means, the road to the park is all mud, so you need a big, high clearance vehicle to get there. As usual, they packed as much people and luggage as possible into the bed of the truck, and off we went. It was a very uncomfortable and sometimes painful ride, but after about 2 hours, they dropped us at the park entrance.

Vwaza has some great nature and wildlife. As with most game parks in Africa, you are not allowed to go about the park unless you are with an armed guard or in a vehicle. So, we were ushered to our hut where we would spend the night, and were told to stay there unless we were going on a guided walk. Fine with us! The hut was grass thatched and clean with a small porch overlooking the lake where you would see hippos and sometimes elephants. One interesting thing though is that when we stayed in Kruger Park in South Africa, the camp was fenced off so the animals couldn't get in (except for some monkeys, impala, and warthogs). But, our hut area was NOT fenced in- this made for a little excitement later on...

Andrej outside our hut.

That afternoon, we decided to go for a guided walk through the park. A park ranger was our guide, and he had a rifle with, which would be used to scare the animals if need be (they do not go around shooting them unless absolutely necessary). It was a little rainy that afternoon, so we didn't see too much. Shortly after we left our camp, we saw some impala on the path and they started to run. They were followed by a group of about 10 elephants! That was fun to see a parade of elephants go past. Later on the walk, we also spotted some hippos lazily floating in the lake. That evening, we made a delicious Indian meal over a fire and went to bed early.

On our guided walk with the park ranger.

A 'sausage fruit' tree. The hippos like to eat these.

I had a little trouble falling asleep as I could hear some animal noises outside, but I did fall asleep eventually. However, at 11:30 I was awoken by more animal noises. I spent a while trying to figure out what was out there. Whatever it was was very close to the hut. I heard grass around the hut being ripped out and chomped on in very large quantities. It had to be elephants. Nothing else can rip out that much grass at a time. And it wasn't just one elephant, there were many elephants. I admit, I was scared. I woke up Andrej, who was not at all concerned that a hoard of elephants were surrounding our hut. He wanted to go back to sleep. But eventually, curiosity got the best of me, and I decided we should peek out the holes in the thatch and see if we could see any of them in the dark. After letting our eyes adjust, we definitely saw them. They were all around the outside of our hut, eating grass, tusks glinting in the moonlight. We tried to take pictures, but of course they didn't turn out in the pitch black darkness. After about a half hour, the elephants moved on.

The next morning, I went outside our hut to look at the grass. It was all trampled and half eaten in many parts. Later that morning, as I was getting ready for breakfast, I heard some screeching nearby, which sounded like some sort of massive cat fight. I looked over to the next hut, and saw a lot of very large baboons running around and having fun. They were pretty riled up, and luckily didn't come over to our hut. Later in the morning, we went over that way to watch some hippos in the lake, and to our delight, we got to see elephants going for a swim! We saw two different groups of elephants swim a short distance across the lake, trunks sticking out of the water for air. It was quite a sight! Who knew something that big and heavy could swim?

Elephants entering the water to swim across the marsh.

That afternoon, we walked a little outside the park and went on another guided walk in the park. It was a sunny day, and more of the animals were out and about. This is good and bad. It is one thing to see an elephant in National Geographic, or on TV, or even from a safari truck. Its a totally different thing to see a group of elephants very nearby when you are on foot. I have read and heard about how dangerous elephants can be if you irritate them. I didn't want to find out first hand. During our walk, we saw a large group of elephants at the lake, drinking and bathing. One of the larger ones stuck its trunk in the air and waved it around. Their eyesight is poor, but apparently their other senses are excellent. They use their trunk to sense things, and they sensed us. The elephant gave a low rumble (some sort of communication to the others) followed by a warning screech. That's when we took off. Our guide led us quickly through the brush and back to the main path. We had other similar close encounters with buffalo and more elephants on that walk, and it made me realize that I was grateful for their rule of no unguided walks in the park!

The group of elephants that we spotted at the lake during our walk.

We spent one more uneventful night in the park. If there were elephants eating outside our hut, they didn't wake me up this time! The next morning we took another uncomfortable pick-up ride back to Rumphi, and another minibus back to Mzuzu. When we got in to Mzuzu, we learned that the president was in town. Malawi is holding their elections in May, and he is running for reelection. This was his opening campaign stop, and people were coming from all over to hear him speak. Everybody was quite happy and excited- I didn't see any protesters. I was walking to the supermarket that afternoon, and I heard sirens. Everyone came running into the street, and we all watched and waved as the presidential convoy went by.

This morning, we took another minibus out to Nhkata Bay, which is a town on Lake Malawi. From here, we are planning to take a ferry out to visit a couple of the islands on the lake. It sounds very beautiful, and I will hopefully take a lot of pictures to show you all!

I will also be posting pictures from the park, but I am not on a fast connection now, so you may all have to wait a while for that. In the mean time, feel free to check my updated flickr site with some more photos from Tanzania and Uganda! www.flickr.com/photos/piratejill .