After leaving the lodge near Mangochi, we drove on down to Liwonde, with the aim of dropping Amanda off to catch a minibus back to Ntcheu before going into the national park to catch the free boat to Mvuu Lodge, where Lin, Mari and I were booked in for our safari. It was at this point that we realized that we didn’t, after all, have enough diesel to get us back to Blantyre without filling up. This was a big worry, as we had not seen any filling stations with diesel in the entire journey – all of them had fire extinguishers by the diesel pumps, signifying no diesel, and no queues! I was impressed by the cool way in which my sister contemplated the prospect of trying to find some black market diesel from Mozambique – not the sort of thing I could easily imagine her talking about doing 12 months ago! But for the meantime we decided to forget about it and enjoy our safari experience.
In areas like this, where there are lots of rich tourists, the street vendors and children were a lot more persistent, to the extent that stopping the car to swap drivers, or buy some water, was actually quite an unpleasant experience. But we managed to negotiate it all unscathed, and found yet another bumpy 16 kilometres of dirt road, leading us down through the villages to the national park entrance.
Here we had to sign in and pay our park fees ($5) before driving another kilometre or so to the river. We left the car, and sat on the jetty waiting for the boat with an assortment of other people, including two men with enormous guns. When we got on the boat, the driver explained that they were park rangers, who were going over to patrol the park, and asked us if we felt comfortable with them being on the boat! We didn’t raise any objections – not a good move to argue with firearms, I feel!
On the way over, we saw our first elephant, happily chomping its way through a tree on the bank.
On arrival, we were greeted by McCloud, who explained, at some length, the rules of the park, and got us to sign waiver forms – I didn’t read it, I have to admit, but imagine it was to absolve them of responsibility if we got trampled by an elephant or eaten by a crocodile. We were told we should wait to be escorted about the camp at night, as the area is open, and animals come and go quite freely. McCloud then took us to our chalet, which was close to the (crocodile infested) river. We just had time for a quick dip – in the swimming pool - and a cup of tea, before it was time to board our safari jeep, together with a Dutch woman who appeared to be visiting the park alone.
Well, we certainly had a good trip, guided by Duncan and Danger – yes, that was his name! We saw a hippo sleeping on land, a lot of elephants and impala, warthogs and water bucks. As the sun went down we stopped and got out of the jeep for sundowners by the river – but not too close as there were plenty of crocodiles and hippos around. We managed to drop our diesel dilemma into the conversation and Mari asked the guides if they could help, or suggest anything. They said they would ask their boss if we could buy some diesel from the park.
As night fell, Danger climbed up on the seat at the front of the jeep with an infra-red light, which he shined into the ever darker bush, highlighting all the creatures hiding in the darkness – hares, elephant shrews, mongooses and different types of antelope. It was incredibly dark, and the stars were amazing.
We were all a bit exhausted when we got back to the lodge, to face a slightly incongruous dinner of roast beef, followed by apple crumble and custard! We were duly escorted to our chalet, according to the rules, and left with an oil lamp burning on the khonde, to keep wild animals at bay.
I was in the bathroom, just about ready to get into bed, when I was startled to hear Lin shriek and exclaim “What the **** was that?” Mari’s voice then joined in, and they both called me to come quickly. There were elephants eating the trees outside our hut – one adult and two babies. We turned out all the lights and peered out into the gloom at them – almost near enough to touch if we had not had the wall and windows of the chalet to divide us from them. They wandered off, but the crunching and tearing noises continued not far away – elephants are not quiet eaters, and Lin was kept awake for a while, wondering if they would be crashing in through her window.
In the morning we discovered not only had the tree outside our chalet been largely demolished, but so had the fence around the swimming pool.
We thought the jeep safari was great, but the boat safari that followed was even more amazing. Almost immediately we left the jetty we saw a group of hippos, their eyes and ears just poking out above the water, and heard them uttering their distinctive call, somewhere between a groan and a roar. We had seen some the night before, emerging from the water like shadows in the twilight to graze in the dark, now they were resting in the cool water to avoid the heat of the sun.
As we meandered along the river, we stopped every so often to look at birds – kingfishers, various herons and storks, and even ospreys and fish eagles. We saw several groups of hippos, and approached one quite close. Duncan turned off the engine, but he and Danger were talking quietly in Chichewa, and looking at the hippos quite closely. Suddenly Duncan fired up the engine again, just as a female hippo broke away from the group and swam towards the boat, really fast. Duncan speeded up to get away from her, and there was a moment of panic as she disappeared, apart from a trail of bubbles, and some of us wondered whether she might come up under the boat and tip us out, to be eaten by the crocodiles, which were also very much in evidence, basking on the bank, or lying just under the water’s surface, in classic sunken log pose.
We escaped, and then Duncan spotted elephants on the opposite bank – lots of elephants! We headed over towards them, and spent the next half hour or so watching them on the bank and in the water. Mari stopped counting at 40, and Danger said he had counted 63. There were several babies, learning how to spray mud over themselves to keep cool. Some of the young males confronted us from the bank, spreading their ears wide and trumpeting, but not very seriously, and Danger assured us that, unlike the hippo, elephants do not move fast in the water. Then a couple of elephants moved into the water, and stood face to face, entwining their trunks and moving around each other as they went in deeper and deeper. Duncan told us that elephants often mate in water, and this seemed to be what was going on, although they were very discreet about it, and disappeared completely under water for quite long periods of time, apart from the occasional periscope trunk.
When we eventually went back to the camp, we passed another boat which had headed upstream, rather than downstream like us, and Duncan told us, slightly smugly, that they hadn’t seen any elephants at all, so it seems we were very lucky. It was certainly an amazing experience.
We had coffee and sat around, reviewing our pictures and watching the warthogs and vervet monkeys which are the most frequently seen animals around the camp itself. The monkeys are very bold; in fact when we were having lunch one of them jumped right up on our table and stole a piece of bread, and had to be chased away by a waiter with a catapult!
Then good news! Duncan’s boss had agreed to sell us 20 litres of diesel at not much above the pump price – so we were able to continue on our journey as originally planned, without looking for shortcuts.
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