Rats, cats, bats and...hippos?

Thursday morning starts out rough. Our roof rat friend (or other unknown ROUS – rodent of unusual size) has been tromping around above our heads all night keeping us both awake. This is Nathaniel’s third or fourth bad night in a row, although our buddy is so active Wednesday evening that it disturbs even my own sound sleep. (In our search for said ROUS, we’ve discovered a half-dozen bats who have also taken up residence in our rafters, but luckily they’re out doing their bat thing while we’re trying to sleep.) We’re up at five am – and, bleary eyed, decide to set out for Liwonde even earlier than planned.

The drive is strikingly beautiful – especially a long stretch of rolling hills with jutting escarpments through which the one-lane highway wends and winds. We reach Liwonde’s Hippo View Lodge (approximately 4 hours south-east of Lilongwe) just in time for Nathaniel to join a two-day salt iodization monitoring meeting for the pre-lunch session. I settle in to do some work on my own projects (building a website and updating the capability statement for Salephera Consulting Ltd) and away we go. Multiple meals on the lodge khondie (veranda) bring us some vocal cat friends and swooping bat friends, but we see none of the promised hippos!

What to do? Trek further on to the Liwonde National Park’s Bushman’s Bao Bab Lodge for the weekend. Saturday morning, we follow a winding dirt track through corn fields and villages for 4km and arrive at a Bao Bab grove with a cluster of thatched structures. We’re shown to our safari tent (complete with protective thatch a-frame) and invited to help ourselves to drinks at the self-serve bar and relax in the open-air “living room.” We arrange an evening game drive and a morning canoe trip – hopefully we’ll finally get to see these promised hippos!

Little do we know that we’ll leave on Sunday feeling sun tired, but a little gross. It’s the first time I’ve been to a national park and done negative exercise. The game drive is awesome (see pictures of all our sightings and the rest of the trip here) but it’s three hours of sitting in the safari truck. We only climb out to pay the park fee. Same with the canoe trip – three hours of being poled down the river by our guides while we tried to stay comfy on the canoe bench and get good shots without getting the camera wet. We do take one walk down to the river, but are quickly stymied in our exploring by the preponderance of hippo tracks and the muddy sludge. And the food! Three delicious vegetarian meals -- three courses for dinner, two for breakfast – and lounging around all day = sluggish Hookses!

Hmmm…may need to try to track down a more innovative, interactive safari company next time. If that’s possible. The “lodge organizes everything” method seems to be the norm here. Yet another indication of the income stratification here – it’s nearly impossible not to vacation like a rich person.