Itinerary

DAY 1; (1 Night)
GUEST HOUSE LILONGWE, Lilongwe

On arrival into Lilongwe Airport we meet our vehicle and guide and are driven to Guest House Lilongwe for the night

DAYS 2 - 3; (2 Nights)
ZOMBA FOREST LODGE or KU CHAWE INN, Zomba Plateau

In the morning, after breakfast, we depart the guest house for the spectacular drive south along the western spine of the Great African Rift to Zomba. This drive takes about 4 hours and offers many wonderful views down to the lake and over to Mozambique to the west.

Zomba Forest Lodge is a cosy, unpretentious colonial forester’s house with en-suite rooms and a separate lounge, dining area, set in beautiful gardens and surrounded by a mixture of montane forest and pine plantation.

Ku Chawe Inn has one of the most spectacular settings in Africa. It is perched 2000 meters up on the steep edges of Zomba Mountain. The hotel has recently been completely refurbished and boasts spacious en-suite rooms with cosy fireplaces. Being so high, the weather is pleasantly cool in the hot months and can be chilly at night in the winter.

There are many options available today including walking around the plateau, birding, and visiting some of the viewpoints which fringe the edge of the plateau. A round trip along the top of the mountain is about 25 kms and can easily take the best part of a day with constant stopping at points of interest. In the hotter months there are some great swimming spots.

A trip to Zomba (Malawi's former capital)
A trip around the market offers wonderful photographic opportunities, this market, being one of the busiest and most colourful in Malawi. Witchdoctors, tin smiths and second hand clothes stalls literally wedged in between the piles of freshly picked fruit and vegetables. Zomba's development as the old British Capital is entirely due to the temperate climate on the plateau. The mountain was settled by the British in the late 19th century as a respite from the heat of the low lying plains, in a similar fashion to the hill stations of India. Zomba Mountain is in fact a large massif and offers spectacular scenery, forests of both, plantation pine and indigenous woodland, clear running streams and excellent walking and bird watching. Within easy walking of the hotel are the newly constructed Mulunguzi Dam, and the Trout Farm and for fit walkers we recommend visits to Chingwe's Hole , Emperor's View and Queen's View.

DAYS 4 - 5; (2 Nights)
LUJERI LODGE, Mulanje Mountains

After breakfast we board the vehicle for the scenic drive east to Mulanje Mountain. The journey takes us through the rolling tea fields of the Thyolo district where the early colonial settlers first planted tea in the 1880’s. The drive usually takes about 4 hours.

Lujeri Lodge is near to the base of Mt Mulanje on one of the oldest colonial tea estates in the country and the guest house has a swimming pool as well as fantastic walks on offer around the estate. The lodge is an old tea estate manager’s house and has the old world charm of a bygone era. Your exact programme for today will be decided in discussion with your guide who will have given you the options over last night’s dinner. Among these will be some gentle walking along the foothills of the mountain and a tour of the nearby tea factory.

DAYS 6 - 8; (3 Nights)
MVUU WILDERNESS LODGE, Liwonde National Park            Jump to Mvuu Wilderness Lodge

After breakfast we depart for Liwonde though the village strewn Phalombe Plain and soon climb down into the Great African Rift Valley to Liwonde Town where we will meet a boat which will take us up the Shire River to Mvuu Lodge. Driving time is about 3 hours and the boat journey is one hour. The Park is considered to be the finest in Malawi and one of the best birding locations in Africa and offers some of the most scenic game viewing, beautiful riverine surroundings and varied bird watching and game viewing in the region. A great deal of the terrain is Shire River floodplains, much loved by the healthy population of elephants in this park.

Mvuu Wilderness Lodge is situated along the banks of a quiet lagoon flowing off the Shire River. The lodge offers comfortable tented accommodation in 5 spacious ‘Hemingway’-styled safari tents, with own en-suite facilities for a maximum of 10 guests. The dining room, which is high above the lagoon on stilts, is a breezy and relaxing place to spend time in-between activities. There is a pool which is especially welcome during the summer months set amongst shady trees within earshot of hippos in the river. As well as boat safaris, game drives and nature walks enable us to experience a wide range of game, including large numbers of sable antelope, hippo, impala, and waterbuck. Huge crocodiles and serval are also fairly common.

DAYS 9 - 10; (2 Nights)
MUMBO ISLAND, Lake Malawi

Today we will depart from Mvuu after breakfast and initially drive through picturesque villages to the main road and then head north to the lake, stopping en route at the bustling town of Mangochi for a look at the museum. The driving time is around 3 hours.

The peninsula is an exquisite rocky promontory full of towering forest clad hills and was named by Dr David Livingstone after Sir Thomas Maclear who had in the 1840’s taught Livingstone the rudiments of map making. The early Scottish Missionaries chose it as one of their earliest stations owing to the safe shelter from the often stormy lake and now it is a proclaimed protected area, Lake Malawi National Park. The first national park in the world set aside for the preservation of freshwater fish. The lake is home to over 2000 species of brightly coloured algae feeding fish from the Cichlid family. Many are endemic to the lake and species are still being discovered and catalogued. The areas around the Kayak Africa Camps are among the best spots on the whole lake for viewing these fish, most of whom live near the surface and can easily be spotted by snorkeling.

DAY 11
Depart to Lilongwe Airport where safari ends

The drive to the airport in Lilongwe normally takes about 4 hours so often involves a very early boat off the island before heading west and north, up the edge of the rift again to Lilongwe International Airport where we bid farewell to the safari

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