| "...night and day filled the air… with a heavy, all-pervasive but delicious scent of a lost world."
Laurens van der Post.
Relatively undeveloped, roughly the size of Pennsylvania, Malawi is one of the smallest and least known countries on our portfolio, making it perfect for those in search of an experience free of queues, of over-packed intineraries, of the need to rush. Offering a stunningly varied terrain, a number of well run national parks, and, of course, its extraordinary lake, Malawi is something of a very well kept secret.
More sea than lake - it is nearly six hundred kilometres long, and, in places, up to eighty kilometres wide - Lake Malawi makes up much of the country's eastern borders. Home to over five hundred species of fish, sometimes up to seven hundred metres deep, lined by beaches that in texture and colour compete happily with its Indian Ocean counterparts, it is Africa's third largest lake, and, as such, supports a wonderfully rich variety of plantlife.
The water itself is warm, generally calm and beautifully lit. The swimming is fabulous, as is the diving, and surface sports abound. Steamers and traditional fishing boats dot the horizon, islands provide intrepid travellers with quirky alternative itineraries, and, to the south, for elephant junkies, there is Liwonde National Park.
Away from the lake, Malawi's ever changing landscape is - for those interested in seeing Africa on foot - an unmissable opportunity. Split in places by The Great Rift Valley, raised in others by plateaus and mountains, and periodically saturated in its lowlands by the lakes major outlet, Shire River, it is a rare and wonderfully stocked paradise.
Welcoming, relaxed, and possessing in its lake a wild miracle, Malawi is guaranteed to delight just about anyone. |
