Malawi's Liwonde National Park

Life and Death in the wild can be sudden and dramatic. A golden dawn is rising to a chorus of birdsong in Malawi’s Liwonde National Park as antelopes graze and butterflies flit among lush grass, while a warthog laps quietly at a reedy brook. It is a bucolic African scene of peace and harmony. 

Then all hell breaks loose.

The water erupts as a prehistoric monster rears from the depths, seizes the hog’s head in massive jaws, and drags it squealing and thrashing to a watery grave.

The real battle begins when other crocodiles close in to fight for the prize. It lasts for hours as tourists watch from a game lodge metres away.

The day after the hog’s demise in Liwonde, I witness a heavyweight dispute between a hippo and an elephant. 

The hippo is splashing about in a river with its pals when a herd of elephants lumbers up to browse on the banks. This annoys the hippo, which roars from the water with jaws wide open in a ferocious display of anger.

The nearest elephant is unimpressed. It charges, trunk raised and ears flaring, and the hippo retreats to midstream, where it half submerges and glares balefully at its adversary. In nature, size matters.

Last week there was an even more dramatic spectacle here, as vets in helicopters fired tranquilliser darts to anaesthetise hundreds of elephants, the beginning of one of the largest animal translocations in history.

From Liwonde, the elephants are being taken by truck to another Malawian reserve as part of a $22 million rehabilitation project.

Malawi’s premier nature reserve has always had an impressive array of wildlife thanks to the Shire River, a mighty watercourse flowing from Lake Malawi to the Zambezi River that is the lifeblood of the park and its myriad denizens.

But it is about to become more diverse with the return of big cats as part of the ongoing rehabilitation initiative by African Parks, which is fencing the 130km perimeter, restocking the park with locally extinct species and relocating its surfeit of elephants.

Lions, Leopards, and Cheetahs will, in due course, roam Liwonde’s 518sq km of acacia woodland and riverine forests, black rhinos will be released from an enclosed sanctuary to join them, and neighbouring villagers are delighted that the fence will prevent the park’s remaining elephants from rampaging through their crops.

The non-profit African Parks organisation, based in South Africa with Dutch support, has already transformed Malawi’s Majete Wildlife Reserve and is including the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve in its latest long-term initiative. 

The aim is to help Malawi become the next big safari destination.

“African Parks have given us hope,” says Samuel Chihana, my field guide at Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve. “I remember when Majete was empty, it was all poached. Now the Big Five [rhino, elephant, buffalo, lion and leopard] are there and they will do the same here. And the lions will be part of the security against poachers.”

So far nobody has told thousands of impala, waterbuck and kudu grazing placidly in grasslands devoid of big predators that the lions are coming. As a result, a game drive in Liwonde, far from the crowds of big reserves in neighbouring countries, is a more intimate experience among animals that show only polite interest in us, except for the odd pachyderm.

Liwonde’s big advantage over the savannas of many African reserves is its river, which is a haven for countless hippos, elephants, crocodiles, antelopes and birdwatchers. More than 400 species of birds have been recorded flitting around the lagoons, marshes and woodlands, including a couple of wire-tailed swallows that cheekily hitch rides on the bows of boats leaving Mvuu Lodge.

There are hippos everywhere, congregating sociably in half-submerged groups, and occasionally a scarily huge Nile crocodile slithers from the banks. It is safe to assume that anything in the Shire River resembling a half-sunken log is alive and dangerous. 

We are paying close attention to one of these monster reptiles when a surfacing hippo blunders into us, causing even the hitchhiking swallows a brief flutter of concern. Fortunately our boat is bigger than the hippo.

Cruising a sedate river within metres of wild creatures unconcerned by our presence makes an agreeable change from bouncing around dirt tracks on safari drives in arid savanna for hours. 

There are wonders of nature at every turn, from fish eagles gazing imperiously from a jackal berry tree to waterbuck wading in lagoons, and a green-backed heron fishing with a grasshopper for bait.

And soon the lions will come. 

A carnivore research project at Liwonde, supported by Britain’s Bristol University, reckons the park has enough bush meat to support at least one pride of about 10 lions, although researcher Buffy Smith admits they may change the game-viewing experience.

“It’s quite nice there are no predators at present, because you can get closer to the antelopes and warthogs,” says Smith. “The best thing here is it’s a bit more difficult to get to, so you have the park pretty much to yourself and you see all the game without five other vehicles around you. In the dry season you can have 20 elephants swimming across the river, and you are in a boat beside them.”

The dry season is also when guests can join morning walks tracking black rhinos in a woodland sanctuary at Liwonde. 

Krisztian Gyongyi, a Hungarian ecologist supervising the rhino conservation project, is hugely encouraged by the African Parks initiative. He is planning to introduce more rhinos to enhance the genetic pool, and says simply, “This place is a national treasure.”

The hippos would probably agree, although hearing them shuffling and grunting around the lodge at night can be unnerving at first. Then you get used to it, and look forward to the breakfast entertainment of swallows swarming around giant baobab trees, and waiters with catapults chasing marauding vervet monkeys.

A memory that lingers is the haunting whistle of a little bird called the tropical boubou echoing in the forest at dawn. It is like a call from the spirit world. Many local villagers have been summoned to that world prematurely after close encounters with hippos and crocodiles.

The golden rules are never to come between a hippo and the river … and don’t even think about going for a swim.

There are no such hazards a few kilometres away on the Zomba plateau, a towering 1830 Metre escarpment swathed in exuberant forest alive with birdsong. 

Admittedly, there are leopards, but they keep pretty much to themselves. Tom and Petal, an enterprising British couple who run Zomba Forest Lodge halfway up the mountain, usually can tell when there is a big cat around.

“If the dogs sniff the air and refuse to go out, we know there is a leopard in the woods,” Tom says.

Credits : The Australian