I was told to go take a hike...: South Luangwa National Park Safari

On Friday, Christina, Stephanie, and I left Lilongwe for Zambia to safari for three nights and four days at South Luangwa National Park. We stayed at a place called Marula Lodge and the trip was all inclusive. This meant meals, two game drives per day, lodging, and snacks were all included. The main thing we had to organize and pay for was the transit to and from the safari but my friends here knew someone who knew someone who could take us. Jacob our driver was great, safe, knowledgeable about all the questions about Malawian culture, running a taxi service, farming, and all the other questions we asked him during our 5 hour drive. It was an easy drive because Lilongwe is the major city closest to South Luangwa and crossing the border into Zambia from Malawi was easy and took only about an hour.

How safaris work is that you get up early for a four hour game drive in the morning (0600-1000), come back to the lodge to relax, have lunch at 1130, tea and cake at 1500, an evening game drive (1530-1930), and a three course dinner after the last drive. The theme of a safari is seeing as many types of animals as possible and then relaxation, and we scored on both accounts.

The second day at Marula we were there we saw almost everything on our two game drives. I will only post a few below because between the three of us took 2000 pictures over the course of our four game drives but we saw elephants, leopards, giraffes, lions, hyenas, the Lillian Lovebird and lot of other birds, 3-4 types of antelopes, zebras, a wildebeest, hippos, crocodiles, baboons, two types of mongoose, genet (animal related to mongoose that scientist though was a cat for a long time), porcupines, velvet monkeys, guinea fowl, monitor lizards, and three warthogs. The two disappointments was not seeing buffalo and rhinos but rhinos don’t live in the park so I guess I need to safari again sometime to see those.

Some of the cool animal things we saw happen were elephants crossing a river, elephants fighting, an elephant aggressively getting close to our vehicle, giraffes fighting, a hyena during the day, zebras horsing around, and lions roaring. You ride in a vehicle that is like an oversized SUV without a top. This way you can look around you and see the animals. This also means that if the animals get really close to you but this wasn’t a problem except for when the lions went by us within 6 feet.

On our third day, a woman who was a birder with a blog as started her safari and we spent the morning on a birding safari. It was nice since we saw so many large animals the day before except the woman was overbearing and bossy to our driver. She was intent on seeing Lillian Lovebirds and didn’t care about the other people on the safari. For the afternoon safari, Christina and I made it clear we didn’t want to do a bird only safari. This didn’t go over super well but the driver did a good job of balancing the competing interests. He did so well that we saw the lovebirds when we were heading to see the buffalo that the rest of us wanted to see. We didn’t see the buffalo because it was sunset but the woman got to see the whole reason for her trip.

We drove back today and tomorrow Stephanie and I are leaving Malawi to fly to Livingstone, Zambia tomorrow to see Victoria Falls!! So excited for this week! After that she will go home and I will be on my own in Zambia until the end of the month.