Return to Malawi

After 21 months back in the UK while Covid regulations imposed travel restrictions we returned to Malawi, arriving in a torrential downpour (it is the middle of the wet season, though it started very late). The van was just as we left it and we soon settled in to our travel routine.

Just after we landed I contacted Ruth & Jurgen who we last saw 6 years ago after travelling through China and Tibet with them, to discover they were just 100kms north of Lilongwe! so we arranged to meet up for a couple of days. After getting supplies and some spares in Lilongwe we returned to the Lake Malawi, visiting one of the camps we stayed at before. It is clear from all the camps we visited that they have had a really difficult over the last 2 years, with very little income, and just as tourism was picking up before Christmas the Omicron variant caused mass cancellations.

We headed south along the lake to visit places we had skipped in our rush to get home in 2020, visiting Cape McClear, a beautiful sandy bay backed by the wooded hills of the National Park. A boat trip on the lake gave the opportunity to see Fish Eagles plucking fish thrown from the boat out of the water.

We returned to Liwonde National Park, where in 2020 we decided we had to get home, but recent torrential rain had made the roads too wet for us. We were treated to waterbuck, kudu and bushbuck in the camp, as well as a couple of hippo passing beside our van as we returned from dinner! We managed to slide off the track from the camp, and had half the local village help dig us out, helped by a passing car.

As the south seemed to be suffering regular torrential downpours we spent the following week working our way back north along Lake Malawi, staying at some beautiful lakeshore campsites enjoying the summer weather.

From the shore we could see the great plumes of mating Lake flies which form at this time of year. They must contain billions of flies as they looked like plumes of smoke on the horizon. We are back in Lilongwe and have just taken our Covid test ready to cross into Zambia tomorrow.