I left you hanging with the beginning of my encounter with
the hippos of Liwonde during our canoe safari… we were so close to them! We
just quietly canoed on by, and although we got some seemingly dirty looks (but
who can really read a hippos face?) we passed by safely. It was a beautiful
view of the river and the park from where we were canoeing. Mike, photog
extraordinaire, took a billion pictures which will hopefully be updated to
facebook soon for your viewing pleasure. I couldn’t even name all the animals
we saw (and that Mike has pictures of), we saw a lot of the smaller type of
animals.
UNTIL… we turn our canoes around and begin to head back the
direction we came, when we see, a small herd of elephants feeding themselves in
a field. We have to stop our canoes, because the path we need to go thru is too
close to the elephants- and the facts are, although elephants are beautiful and
majestic creatures (my personal favorites) they will stomp the shit out of you
if you bother them. And I guess they’ve earned it, being the biggest land
mammal on Earth and all. So we sit in our canoes, watching the elephants eat…
for awhile. More than a half hour passes, and our canoe guides take some safe
efforts to force the elephants to leave- namely, tapping the side of our canoes
with the oars. [Ideally] just bothersome enough to send the elephants away, but
not so bothersome that they will desire to stomp us.
Another half hour passes with our subtle oar tapping.
Elephants show no sign of moving. Our guides start talking amongst themselves
between our canoes, apparently discussing what we should do. They decide… to
move on, and head toward camp. We’ve
been stopped in our canoes for more than an hour, so I guess it’s just time to
move on… much to Kate and I’s fear. Mike was desensitized to the danger of
elephants as he had just ridden a domesticated one in Zambia. Kate and I on the
other hand, were quite fearful. As quietly as we could possibly be, our guides
paddle our boats forward as Kate and I duck down into our boats, in pathetic
attempts to hide/keep an eye on the elephants, should they decide to head
towards us to stomp us. We moved very, very slowly, but eventually, we’re in
the clear, out of view of the elephants and we can begin to chat again. Mike
asks his canoe guide if he can paddle back the rest of the way, as we are
nearby now. Mike takes over paddling when his guide says “There might be
elephants around the corner” and my canoe’s guide says “alipo”, which means, “it’s there”, and we look up, and see in the near
distance a baby elephant. Cue Kate and I’s desperate ducking, we paddle by, and
make it back to camp before a full on panic attack is induce. Whew!!
It was a very exciting safari that was TOTALLY worth the
money ($20!!!). We were exhausted from all the sun exposure (even with our
awesome hats) so we went to get lunch in town, and have some drinks by the
river (where we could watch the hippos have their meetings at a safe distance).
It was a really wonderful stop on our trip and Kate was a wonderful host!!
Thank you Kate!!!
The next day we headed to Zomba- the former capital of
Malawi. It is a very developed area, with a big university, lots of NGOs,
businesses, and the famous Zomba Plateau. My friend Gibran lives in Zomba town
and hosted us for the night most comfortably in his very fancy loft apartment.
We had brownies and watched tv!! The plan was for Mike and I the next day to
head to the plateau to camp the next night, so it was nice to live it up fancy
style before our overnight camping trip.
The next morning we repacked our bags and shopped for some
food supplies to take with us camping. We headed to the base of the Zomba
plateau and began the walk up.. it’s a paved road all the way up (there are
less developed paths, but we knew the road would take us to our camp site). We
walked for a bit of it but then we were easily able to hitch a ride all the way
to our camp site, the Trout Farm- the site of a fish farming operation in
progress. The ride was beautiful. Zomba plateau houses a very full and green
forest reserve, and a beautiful dam. Again, Mike gladly took pictures. We set
up camp and then set out to hike some more- there is a big loop of a hiking
path around the top of the plateau, supposedly 7 hours. Mike and I packed some
bread and peanut butter to take with us to eat on our long hike. Using Mike’s
impeccable sense of direction we were able to just wing it- although our hike
had no big “end point” or destination, we stopped at some beautiful sites and
enjoyed the exercise. We also may or may not have left our initials carved in a
tree stump somewhere.
We got back to camp to find someone selling fresh
raspberries harvested from the plateau- we gladly bought the whole bowl and
destroyed them immediately. Delicious!! So yummy!!! I’ve never really
considered myself a berry person but these were delicious. As the sun began to
set, we met some fellow campers- a swiss couple with an AMAZING truck that
turned into a residence. It looked much more comfortable and warm than our
dinky (yet awesome) tent. We started a big fire to cook and for warmth- and
enjoyed a dinner of delicious ramen noodles and soya pieces. It was a wonderful
evening of chatting around a campfire, who doesn’t love that? Unfortunately,
when we headed to bed, we found we weren’t as prepared for the drop in
temperature that comes with being on top of the plateau. We were quite cold,
the difference in temperature between the plateau and town was astounding.
But we survived!!! We were tired from our not so great
sleep, but we packed up and headed down the mountain. We did not luck out so
much on the way down- we had to walk the entire way, which was a little rough
(but made me appreciate the ride we got up that much more). On our way down we
stopped at Casa Rosa, a new Italian restaurant, where we had chocolate crepes
and fruit salad. It was random, and delicious. We headed back to Gibran’s to
get our things together and for a rest, and that afternoon, we set off to
Blantyre- the biggest city in Malawi, located in the southern region.
