A LION OUTSIDE OF OUR TENT?! Yes! @ Mvuu Camp – Liwonde National Park, MALAWI

There aren’t many places where you will hear a lion roaring just outside of your tent. The loud alarms of the roosting baboons in response to the presence of a predator added to the ambiance. If our alarms hadn’t already gone off at 4:30 in the morning, we certainly would have woken up to this kind of alarm. And as the lioness roared and the baboons screamed, we got out from inside of our tent because it was time to go birding, secretly hoping we could see the big cat and that she was far enough away to not care about us. We could hear her, but we didn’t see her.

After leaving Mozambique, we headed to our next destination, “the warm heart of Africa” as Malawi is affectionately known. Malawi, rich in biodiversity, where we were planning on spending at least two, maybe three weeks, was the first country where we really had to start racking up some birds. We made a quick stop at the Zomba Plateau for Malawi’s only endemic, Yellow-throated Apalis, and another range-restricted species, White-winged Apalis.

After that it was off to Liwonde National Park, one of Malawi’s five national parks, and we had a lot of targets remaining. I was most excited for this visit because we would finally be staying in the same place for more than one night in a row. Let me repeat, TWO NIGHTS in one location! That might not sound like much, but up until this point we had set up and packed up our tent EVERY single day in order to make it to a new place to find some targets. We were planning on spending two nights birding and relaxing in the tourist-friendly Mvuu Camp inside of Liwonde. When we turned up however, we were told that the road was closed in the rainy season and we would not be able to drive through the park to get there and would instead have to take an outside road to an alternate entrance and then be shuttled over by boat. This was not ideal. Our truck is our home on wheels and is fully equipped with our food, cooking supplies, and tent. It saves us money if we can self-sustain ourselves, but we couldn’t bring our truck over via a little boat and instead had to purchase our meals and pay to be driven around on safari, arguably the most expensive ticket item at $70 for a 2 hour drive! That’s a lot when it could have been free…

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But we fortunately were paired up with a guide who loved to go birding and knew his birds. And it wasn’t the worst thing to have him and an armed guard help us find some of our targets because now we would be able to walk around on foot as opposed to just birding by car. We weren’t targeting big game, but did run into a small group of Cape Buffalo while we were out birding. After a bit of cat-and-mouse we connected with our main target, Speckle-throated Woodpecker, but not before having two Cardinal Woodpeckers throw us for a loop. The afternoon resulted in Lillian’s Lovebirds, White-browed Sparrow-weaver, Northern Gray-headed Sparrow, Little Bee-eater, and we ended the night scanning trees along the streams with excellent views of Pel’s Fishing-owl. While driving around we finally saw lions, our first cats since we arrived in Africa!

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We went to sleep in our little ground tent hoping that those cats wouldn’t wander into the unfenced campground, but clearly one did. It’s exhilarating in a special kind of way. The following morning we left early to find the bird that had brought us here in the first place, White-backed Night Heron. We took a boat ride out along the Shire River in search for our target heron. After two hours of searching to no avail, we gave up, ticked Brown-breasted Barbet and then birded around camp. We were confined to the campground so fortunately for Ross it was very birdy and he was entertained by Livingston’s Flycatcher, Grey-tailed Tit-flycatcher, Collared Palm-chat, Bohm’s bee-eater, and Red-billed Firefinch for a solid two hours. We must be the first people to come to Mvuu Camp and not see White-backed Night Heron, guess we will just have to target it elsewhere.

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We couldn’t drive through Liwonde all the way to Mvuu camp, but we could still enter and drive around the southern portion. And doing just that was next on our agenda. Much to my dismay, we packed up our tent after only one night and moved locations because it was just too pricey to spend another night at Mvuu Camp without our trusty Hilux.