Liwonde National Park

Liwonde National Park

I took a long weekend this past weekend and decided to go to Liwonde National Park. The DI’s all had a project they had to finish so I set-out on this adventure alone…I goggled Liwonde National Park and the surrounding lodges…I then emailed the owner of the lodge to express my interest in staying there and asked what I needed to do to get there…I also had a meeting with the DI supervisor on the campus to get his advice on what means of transportation I should use…before I left I gave the phone number of the lodge where I would be staying to the supervisor and, told one of the other DI’s that I would text her so she would know when I had arrived at my destination… “I bought a cell phone here a few weeks ago just to have for safety reasons”…I was a little nervous about traveling by myself but I knew as long as I was smart about every move I made that I would be safe…on Friday, I woke-up at 5:30am and took a bike taxi to town and took a mini bus to Blantyre and then another mini bus to Limbe and got on a bigger bus to Liwonde.  I then took a bike taxi to the lodge “Bushman’s Baobabs” The lodge was splendid and was owned by a guy from South Africa. It reminding me of a lodge that my fiancé and soon to be mother-in-law stayed at in Costa Rica when she came to visit us… 

 

At night time you could hear the hippos right outside of the lodge; the owner had an electrical fence put-up to keep the hippos from coming into the camp…needless to say I didn’t get a lot of sleep the two nights I stayed there…

not a bad way to take my first HOT shower in over a month..

    

I met some people from Florida who were staying at the lodge and offer me a ride through the National Park with them. They had rented a really cool old  Land Rover and had driven down from Lake Malawi. So I jumped on the offer and we took a drive through the park....

pumba!!!

 

 the next morning after a tasty breakfast i went on a canoeing safari…my fiancé told me before I left that he didn’t think it was such a good idea to go on this safari because he didn’t think it was very safe…it took a lot of convincing from the lodge owner before I decided to go…I may have had a few minor panic attacks when we first got on the canoe “because every noise I heard in the bush I thought it was a hippo coming to get us” BUT, this safari made my whole trip worth my while...it was incredible…just being so close to the enormous animal would make anyone’s heart skip a few beats! I knew that once my fiancé had talked to the lodge owner that he too would have gone on the canoeing safari…so that gave me the extra courage I needed to embark on this extraordinary adventure…

i was super nervous in this picture!!

quite extraordinary!!

the first elephant i have seen in the wild...

very brave fisherman

i cant take credit for this picture...there was a girl i met who was from Ireland staying at the same lodge I was and she was in a canoe a little bit behind me with a much nicer camera...such a great weekend!!