Arrival in Zomba - Liwonde Boat Safari and Game Drive

We woke up in Packachere! Finally next to my wife, the kids were sleeping in one of the dorms. Packachere, her home for the last three months, could finally be assessed. Nice and roomy place! I'll show a picture.

This is a view of the garden from the front porch

Anyway, things had already been planned for us, so we had to get a move on. Gytha went to work, and took Silke along. Tijl and I had some breakfast and then helped Mariet, the dutch manager, to fix the generator. She showed us a bit around the town and before we knew it it was time for lunch.

At African Heritage they do not only do research, but own a cafe as well. This wonderful see-saw is made with a traditional Malawi canoo, they are still in use today. People on the lakes and rivers do stand up in them like the kids are doing here. And they serve good sandwiches as well as decent coffee. Decent coffee is something that can be hard to come by in the country of Ricoffy.

And then we were off to Liwonde. Liwonde gave it's name to the Liwonde National Park, which runs alongside the Shire River. At Liwonde there is a barrage in this big river running from Lake Malawi down to the Zambezi. And on this river runs a safari service, Malawian Cruise.

They have this big boat for the posh people who want to sleep on the river itself!

But we were in the open safari boat, which was great fun! We had drinks, ice provided courteously by the crew. And we saw the usual animals; hippo, crocodile, elephant, impala, more hippo, more hippo, more hippo with birds on their head. And then some white pelicans, rare to be seen. And my daughter took a nice picture of one of the elephants, too.

My daughter

The elephant

My son, in the meantime, was frolicking about with his selfmade fishing rod. He had been putting it together since he first learned we would be boating.

His rod, cleverly made with what was available, a real African style toy.

The sunset on the way back was something like this...

We slept in the lodge on the shore, and then did a game drive in the mornig at 6.00 am, just as the park opened. It was not anyway near crowded, I believe we were the only ones in the park at that time.

And we some many impalas, warthogs, king fishers, elephant droppings...

Phone pic through my binoculars...

And then we went to a bank, Malawi style. It's got a generator running in the back. But it did not work. Eventually the fourth ATM we tried did.