Trip Report: Malawi
Date of visit: October 2019
Malawi was after Eswatini and Mozambique the third stop on a trip through Southern and East Africa, and it felt as if we had entered another world. A much poorer world. On the one hand, the airport of the country’s capital Lilongwe was miserable, to put it mildly, and on the other hand, you could already see many employees of international aid organizations at the airport.
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. Depending on which statistics (or measuring method) you prefer, the country ranks fourth, sixth or tenth among the poorest countries. However, although this poverty is often visible, Malawi has the reputation of being an amazing travel destination. Some people even call the country Africa for beginners. For me, the country also known as “The Warm Heart of Africa” was the one I looked forward to the most on this trip.
The journey didn’t start without problems, though. South African Airways redirected our flight so that we landed in Malawi’s capital Lilongwe instead of Blantyre. Both cities are five hours away from each other. Unfortunately, South African did not consider it necessary to inform us in advance about the change. Only at the check in we found out that our flight wouldn’t go to Blantyre.
As a result, we had to reorganize our trip while waiting at the gate in Johannesburg. Instead of two days at Mount Mulanje, two days in Liwonde became the beginning of our trip. Too bad, we would have loved to see the mountains in Malawi. After all, it should be a sign that it would not be an easy journey.
Vitu, the main character of our Malawi trip.
I associate most of the countries I’ve been to with a particular person. This means that when I think of the country, a certain person immediately comes to mind. In most cases these are people who have influenced my stay in some way. These can be other travelers, tour guides or locals with whom I have spent time.
Often these people remain positive in my memory. However, there are also some characters that I am happy to never see again. The person with whom I will associate Malawi in the future falls into the second category…
Vitu was our driver from Lilongwe to Liwonde. When I booked the hotel at the gate in a hurry, I also asked them to send us a driver. We agreed that the driver would wait for us at the airport in Lilongwe at 12.30. It was about 13.00 when we left the airport building and the driver was not there yet.
Time passed and at about 14.45 Vitu finally arrived. That’s 2.15 hours late. T.i.A. Vitu’s car was an ancient minibus, which was in a terrible condition. Vitu was mid-30s or late 30s, wearing dreadlocks and a Rasta hat. Based on his appearance, I didn’t want to imagine what he did all day.
But he told us that himself. He had been driving since about 6 o’clock in the morning and had already spent 6-7 hours behind the wheel. Now four to five more hours would come. Under these not quite optimal circumstances we took a seat in the fragile vehicle. But did we have another option? We just tried not to think much about it and let Vitu drive us to our next destination.
Beautiful Malawi
My first impression during the drive was that Malawi is an incredibly beautiful country. Often a certain color comes to my mind when I think of a country. West African countries are mostly of a yellow color, while Southern African countries are dominated by dark green landscapes. Malawi seemed to combine these two colors perfectly. The landscape was marked by golden fields, green trees and green hills.
We could also see many Baobab trees. The trees, which are characterized by a very thick trunk, are mainly native to Southern Africa. In Mozambique we have already seen one or the other. Here in Malawi there seemed to be an infinite number of these beautiful trees.
During the ride it also became clear to me why the country is called “The Warm Heart of Africa”. Many people waved at us or showed their thumbs up when they saw us in the car. I often find these nicknames for African countries stupid. For example, “The Smiling Coast of Africa”, as the Gambia is called, where every local smiles at you but wants to pull your money out of your pocket. For Malawi, however, there could not have been a more accurate name.
The journey to Liwonde took long, which was also due to the fact that Vitu took a break from time to time and went about his business. At some point, it also seemed as if he was completely overtired. No wonder with the distance he had already covered that day. His eyes were glassy and empty.
Needless to say, Kati and I started to feel uncomfortable in the car. Especially when the sun went down and Vitu continued to drive in this state. Since both Kati and I had an international driver’s license with us, I asked Vitu if he was tired and if we should take over. However, he insisted on finishing.
It was 8 in the evening when we arrived at our hotel in Liwonde and I gave Vitu the 150 dollars he asked for the ride. There is practically no tourist infrastructure in Malawi. Either you travel in a rather uncomfortable way with public transport, or you pay a relatively high price for a private driver.
Although this first trip with Vitu was adventurous and probably even dangerous, I engaged Vitu for a second trip two days later to Lake Malawi. He offered me to take this trip for 75 dollars and since I had no idea how easy it would be to find another driver, I agreed. The trip would take place in the morning so that Vitu would be more rested at least. 75 dollars also seemed fair to me, as it was about half the distance of the first trip that cost 150 dollars.
Hippo camp
When I booked our hotel in Liwonde, I noticed that Booking.com listed exactly three places for the city. One of these hotels had a 5.4 rating, another had none at all, and the one we finally picked had a 8.6 rating.
All the more shocked we were when we saw our room. It was filthy. Very much so. And in the bathroom there were little sausages on the floor, which we identified as animal excrement. “What is that?” I asked the about 18-year old hotel employee. “Lizard poo. Don’t worry, it’s not poisonous,” he told me with a big grin. Then he wiped away the excrement with a brush and disappeared.
It looked as if we were the only guests in this hotel, which consisted of only five rooms. That’s why it wasn’t a problem to get another room. The second room wasn’t very clean either, but still better than the first one.
The next problem was that we were almost starving. We ate a snack around noon but nothing else during the whole day. The hotel had no own restaurant, so that the young hotel employee accompanied us to a place to eat.
Liwonde is a tiny city and there are hardly any restaurants. On TripAdvisor you won’t find any, on Google there are at least four listed. We were led to the restaurant of trust of our hotel. The restaurant was about five minutes walk away and from the outside it was looking like a restaurant that I would never have entered voluntarily in my life.
You should never judge a book by its cover, they say. In the case of this restaurant, however, this sentence does not apply. The food was maximum a 2 on a scale of 5. You could eat it, but it wasn’t really good. But we had no other choice. As an alternative there were two other restaurants nearby that looked even worse from the outside. In the end, we were full and that was all that mattered.
During the meal I wanted to book the safari for the next day through the hotel employee, but he tried to rip us off. He wanted to charge us for a water safari and a game drive twice the park entrance fee of $25, although both tours take part in the same park and the park entrance fee is valid for one full day. Only after I insisted several times that the price was according to my knowledge much cheaper, he reduced his price.
You can’t really do anything in the evening in Liwonde, so that we went to bed at 21.30. Since we went to the national park the next day at 8.00 o’clock, going to bed early was absolutely okay. But the night wasn’t really relaxing. It was rather adventurous or even frightening. Already when we were lying in bed, we had the feeling that there was an animal in the immediate proximity. However, it was difficult for us to identify the animal from its sounds. To me it sounded like a grunting pig stomping around somewhere in the backyard of the hotel.
At about 4 in the morning Kati woke me up because the noises became louder and louder. Our bed was right next to the window, so I looked out and tried to see if there was something. I couldn’t see anything, although I still heard the loud noises.
“Could it be that an animal was walking around in the backyard at night?” I asked the guy from the hotel the next morning. “Oh, hippos!” he answered again with a big grin. “Sometimes they come here to graze at night.” Ah, nice, hippos. So the mammals that kill the most people in the world every year. Twice as many as lions and tigers together! For the hotel employee it was obviously the most normal thing in the world.
Liwonde Water Safari
Our first activity in Malawi was the Liwonde National Park, where we would take part in a water safari in the morning and a game drive in the afternoon.
On a water safari you can watch the animals from a boat. In the Liwonde National Park you drive on the Shire River through the park. The brave ones can even use a kayak. We were not up for this thrill, however, as the river is home to many hippos and crocodiles.
We started at about 8 o’clock together with three locals, once up the river and then down again. In the first half hour we saw one or the other hippo, but the big spectacle started later. At a certain point we saw one hippo after the other. The sweet but dangerous animals rested mostly in a group of 15-20 in the water.
The hippos reminded me a little of that game, in which you have to hit heads that come out of hole with a hammer. Most of the time you could only see about ten heads at the same time, while the other half of the group was under water. And when a head came out of the water, it stayed outside for about twenty seconds, watched the boat suspiciously and then disappeared again.
We also saw impalas, buffaloes and crocodiles. The crocodiles lay mostly motionless on the riverbank and sunbathed. From time to time one of them moved and got into the water. To see these beasts from so close was impressive.
Even more impressive was the herd of elephants crossing the river. We saw two such elephant groups, in both cases there were about six elephants on the way to the other side of the river. And we could drive up to a few meters.
The coolest thing was that we had practically the whole river to ourselves. We saw exactly one other boat this morning. Malawi is not really a tourist country. If there were such water safaris in Tanzania or South Africa, you would pass another boat 100% every two minutes.
Game drive and a reunion
At noon we had a few hours break before we continued with the game drive. It was about the same price as the water safari (25 dollars, the entrance fee of the park has already been paid in the morning) and lasted 2.5 hours.
The afternoon started with a surprise, because suddenly Vitu stood again in front of our hotel. He was our safari guide, he explained to us joyfully. Aha. We would have expected him the day after to drive us to Lake Malawi. Kati was not very happy about that. She blamed him for the definitely unsafe trip to Liwonde and did not like the fact that Vitu would drive us to Lake Malawi again. Now we had an additional trip with him.
“This is my best car,” Vitu proudly said, pointing to another age-old car. Our mood didn’t get any better when we got into the car and saw several empty beer bottles under the driver’s seat. But hey, we didn’t want to do Vitu wrong. According to the people from our hotel he was a safari expert and we tried to start this safari as open-minded as possible.
It took about twenty minutes until we arrived at the entrance gate of the Liwonde National Park. Vitu quickly did the paperwork there and we had to show the receipt from the morning so we didn’t have to pay the parking fee again. Then we started the safari.
It was our second safari during this Africa trip, after we did a game drive one week before in Eswatini’s Hlane Royal National Park. We had relatively little luck there and saw significantly fewer animals in the two and a half hours than we had hoped. In the Liwonde National Park we had a bit more luck. It didn’t take long until we met a herd of elephants. But the elephant herd was behind dense bushes, so Vitu tried to drive as close as possible.
In Hlane National Park we saw how our safari car was chased by an elephant bull. That’s why we didn’t really like the fact that Vitu got so close. It got especially annoying when we saw a single elephant a few moments later and Vitu got too close for our taste.
Vitu’s driving skills, his ancient car, the difficult roads of the park and aggressive elephants were not a promising combination for us. What annoyed us the most was that Vitu didn’t listen to us when we asked him to stay away from the elephants. Even though Vitu tried to give us the best possible experience, we were still the customers and wished he had reacted to our discomfort.
Landscape-wise the Liwonde National Park was clearly superior to the Hlane National Park in Eswatini. It was more colorful and diverse. While arid fields and trees shaped the nature in Swaziland, here in Liwonde it had the river, forest, fields and hills.
We also saw many animals. Most of all we met species of antelopes. Annoying was Vitu’s theatrical way to explain the animal world to us. Probably inspired by David Attenborough, he kept whispering what was happening. He mostly used the phrase “he is posing for you” when an animal stood next to the car and carefully examined us.
There are also lions, cheetahs and leopards in the park. Unfortunately, we didn’t see them. Vitu tried hard to show us these predators, but at game drives you sometimes get lucky and sometimes not. Later I read that there are only seven lions in the park anyway. So it was understandable that the size of this park meant that the chances of seeing them were rather small.
All in all, the game drive was cool, but it wasn’t as exciting as the water safari in the morning. Vitu tried hard but certainly contributed to this due to his sometimes unprofessional behavior. For example, when he threw an empty plastic bottle out of the car into the park. Once he even got out of the car in the middle of the park, because his old car didn’t start anymore. Well, with this car it wasn’t surprising that this happened at some point.
At least, he tried…
We met Vitu the next morning again for the trip to Lake Malawi. Vitu had his old minibus with him, but this time he was well rested at least. The trip to the lake lasted less than three hours and in between there was one or the other police checkpoint where the police tried to get some money from Vitu.
Corruption is unfortunately also a problem in Malawi. But in contrast to Mozambique, this does not affect the tourists but the locals. In the end, Vitu could always talk his way out and didn’t have to pay anything.
Lake Malawi is the main attraction of the country. Although it is a few hours drive from the international airports, I absolutely wanted to go there. I had the feeling that visiting Malawi without seeing the lake would be like going to New York and missing the Statue of Liberty.
There are many places at Lake Malawi where you can spend a few days. We chose Cape Maclear, one of the more touristy places, if you can call it that. After all, Malawi is not really touristy as I already mentioned. One reason for our choice was also the location of Cape Maclear, as we flew out of the country again from Blantyre. Therefore, we did not want to travel too far to the north, as we would have had a very long drive back to the airport.
It was noon when we arrived at our hotel. But the farewell with Vitu should offer a nice twist. And let me first say that Vitu was always nice to us, although he could act like a moron and drove pretty dangerously. However, it was not nice anymore what he was trying to do when we said good-bye to him…
When I gave him the 75 dollars he demanded for his trip, he said: “It’s 75 dollars per head.” – “I’m sorry?” I replied. “75 USD per head,” he repeated. So in other words double the sum we had agreed on. ‘You damn son of a bitch. How can one be so shameless?’ I thought. The trip was half as long as the one from Lilongwe to Liwonde, for which he charged $150. That’s why I refused to give him another $150. Fortunately, Vitu left without making a scene and we hoped that we would never see him again.
This farewell was basically typical for Vitu. As I said, he was always nice to us, but we still didn’t trust him. He probably thought that he would never see us again anyway, so he could try to rip us off. However, under no circumstances was I willing to give him more money. This guy earned quite well on us in those three days for a rather lousy service he offered. Enough was enough.
Lake Malawi and parasites
We spent the next three days in Cape Maclear, a bay at the coast of Lake Malawi. And the first impression was: wow! The scenery at Cape Maclear is just amazing. It seemed to be the right place with the perfect scenery to relax the next three days.
However, our enthusiasm didn’t last long. Once again our hotel was the best rated on booking.com, but also this time it was clearly below our expectations. After the two rather uncomfortable nights in Liwonde we were looking forward to a better hotel and were disappointed again. The garden with the view to the lake was beautiful, but the bungalows were dirty and the bed the most uncomfortable I have seen in a long time.
As in Liwonde, we shared the room with many mosquitoes, bugs and geckos that made our nights restless. Hotels like these are, however, more the rule than the exception in Malawi and you have to be prepared to share the hotel with countless insects. At least, all my friends who have already been to Malawi had a similar experience.
Also at the lake, our enthusiasm subsided relatively fast. As beautiful as the first sight was, the lake and its coast at Cape Maclear turned out to be a garbage dump at a closer look. Unfortunately, the beach was full of dirt and the worst was all the dog excrement. If you walk a bit along the coast, you see dog poo after dog poo. So it was no surprise that the water didn’t look too clean. The locals didn’t seem to mind, but we lost the desire to swim in the lake.
That’s why the first two days in Cape Maclear were do nothing days. We simply spent the day in the sun on the hotel premises and rested. What we loved every evening was the sunset. It usually lasted pretty short, but the sun shone bright red and looked spectacular. The sunsets in Cape Maclear are among the most beautiful I have ever seen.
On the third day we booked a boat tour that a guy on the beach had sold us. In Cape Maclear you are approached practically every ten meters by a local who wants to sell you something. Usually they sell clothes, artworks or tours. In the end, we booked a trip to the two islands in the lake that can be seen from the bay.
On this tour we saw the beautiful sides of Lake Malawi. As soon as we got away from Cape Maclear, the water became clear and we saw beautiful fish and beaches, which looked very clean due to the lack of people. Under these conditions we finally jumped into the ninth largest lake in the world (and the third largest in Africa).
There were hardly any tourists on the islands we visited, so it was idyllic and relaxed. The best thing was that the lake finally looked clean. In contrast to Cape Maclear we didn’t see any plastic or other garbage swimming in it. Too bad that the lake doesn’t look so nice everywhere.
Another highlight was the fish eagle feeding. Our guide whistled several times loudly towards the island before throwing a fish into the sea. A few seconds later one of the eagles came from the island to get the fish out of the water. Check out the following video to see what I mean:
The tour was fun and definitely worth it and I am glad that we did it. Otherwise, it would have been a bit boring to stay three days at the coast of Cape Maclear.
Reality caught up with us again in the evening. When I read a blog article about Malawi, I learned that Lake Malawi is a high risk area for bilharzia, also known as snail fever. It is a parasite that is carried by freshwater snails and with which you can get infected if you come into contact with contaminated water. This parasite then lays eggs in the host’s body, which can lead to severe organ damage.
The more I googled about it, the more worried I became. Because apparently already a lot of travelers got infected with it in Cape Maclear. Certain TripAdvisor posts suggested that you don’t even have to go into the lake to get infected. Some travelers apparently got infected by the shower in their hotel. The only water source in this area is the lake.
With this new insight we had enough of Lake Malawi. We were already disappointed about how dirty the water and the shore were, now we also knew that the lake was dangerous for our health.
On our way back to Blantyre airport we bought some medicine that we will have to take six weeks after our swim in the lake. Thus, it is good that we came across this disease by chance before it was too late.
Malawi as a travel destination
Malawi is an incredibly beautiful and relatively untouched country, which has a lot to offer, be it mountains, safari or the lake. For me personally, the water safari in Liwonde was one of the highlights, not only in Malawi but on the whole three-week Africa trip. Malawi is also a safe country by African standards and its inhabitants are some of the nicest I have met on the continent.
However, I must admit that I underestimated the country a bit. Malawi is not an easy travel destination. The description that Malawi is a good country for Africa beginners is, in my opinion, far from reality. When it comes to comfort and hygiene, you have to be prepared to make compromises, otherwise you won’t like the country.
Hotel quality is poor in the country and the problem is that you can’t just switch to luxury hotels. There is exactly one five-star hotel in the whole country and the number of four-star hotels is only slightly higher. For me this is astonishing because in most poor African countries you can easily find a Sheraton or a Radisson Blu. Mostly at ridiculously expensive prices, but the hotels are there. Not in Malawi.
Malawi is neither a cheap country, even though it’s one of the poorest in the world. You can eat relatively inexpensively and the hotels are also affordable. What makes the country expensive is the transport. The roads are in good condition, but there is hardly any tourist infrastructure, so you have three possibilities to travel in Malawi. 1) by public transport. 2) with a private driver. 3) you rent a car None of these options are really good. Either you travel without comfort and have a very long time to get from one place to another, or it will be expensive if you choose option 2 or 3.
I look back with mixed feelings on my 93rd country. On the one hand, the nature and also the warm people of Malawi remain positive in my memory. On the other hand, I have the feeling that the trip would have been much better if we had skipped the lake and had seen Mount Mulanje instead, because Cape Maclear did not quite meet my expectations.
As I said, I underestimated Malawi a bit. Although I have already been to 19 African countries, I found Malawi much more challenging than I had expected. Malawi is real Africa with all its advantages and disadvantages. It is a country with enormous tourism potential, but it is not really prepared for tourism yet.
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