Parks and Places

Malawi is one of Africa's smaller countries and one of the most densely populated. It sits right on the edge of the Rift Valley with the huge Lake Malawi, a rift valley lake, making up the bulk of its Eastern boundary. Malawi's safari parks have rebounded in recent years with some wonderful success stories and reloactions of key species like elephants and lions.

Lake Malawi

This is Malawi's major tourist attraction and key to the livelihood of the majority of Malawians in one way or another. Most people visiting Malawi will want to include this beautiful rift valley lake and one of Africa's largest into their itinerary. The Lake is long and narrow and there are a good number of resorts dotted along its shorelines with beautiful beaches and wonderful snorkelling and diving available to look at the incredible array of brightly coloured cichlid fish, most of which are endemic to this lake, along with the other water sports of sailing, or skiing it is a nice way to end or start a joureny to Malawi.

Walking safaris in Majete Wildlife Reserve

Majete National Park

Majete is down in the South West of Malawi is wonderful story of a park brought back to how things should be by the intervention of the African Parks organisation. This park was heavily poached to the extent that there was ostensibly no large mammals left here. Since 2003 there have been several reintroductions of species which inlcude elephant, lions and black rhino and these have all flourished here to the extent that these animals are now being used to repopulate other wild areas of Malawi.

Liwonde National Park

This beautiful park straddles the Shire River that flows from Lake Malawi South towards the Zambezi River and for many years was Malawi's flag ship park however as a result of poor management and human pressure the park had some dark years with excessive poaching and big conflict between animals and people. Then in 2015 African Parks took over the management of the park and since then a much happier situation now exists for all. The snares have been removed some of the elephants were relocated up to Nkhotakota Reserve - Cheetah have been reintroduced into the park and it is now coming back as a premier wildlife destination.

Kusungu National Park

This is Malawis second largest National Park situated on the Western boundary of the country with Zambia. Some say its Malawis best kept secret with a good variety of antelope species, great birding and a nice population of elephant and buffalo with the big predators like lion, leopard and hyena all maing their presence felt.

Nkhotakota Wilderness Area

Right in the centre of Malawi along the edge of the rift valley is a beautiful part of Africa with its hilly and forested topography laced with a network of rivers flowing through it .As with all of the reserves in Malawi it has had a torrid time with poaching and was basically wiped out of its bigger mammals. It was then taken over by African Parks in 2015 and is now going through an amazing transformation as thousands of antelope have been relocated here from Majete and Liwonde and was where the largest ever reloaction project of 500 elephant into the park was undertaken. A park that will get better and better as each year goes by.

Nyika Plateau

This is Malawi's largest National Park situated up in the North of the country and very different from the other parks here and in Africa. As a high plateau it has an amazing variety of Orchids and other wild flowers, and many yet to be described, so for people who enjoy that side of nature, a visit here in the wet months Nov - April can be quite rewarding. It also has a good population of Roan Antelope, Reedbuck, Eland and Zebra along with Bushpig and Warthogs. The domninant predator here are the spotted hyenas although there is also agood population of leopard but difficult to see and lions are also seen here on occasion.

Parks and Places

Malawi

Things to know

Time of year

Safari ideas

Lake Malawi

Majete National Park

Liwonde National Park

Kusungu National Park

Nkhotakota Wilderness Area

Nyika Plateau

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