blantyre

Saturday morning and we were getting up at 5:30 to rent a land rover and go to Majete Game Reserve about an hour and a half outside of Blantyre. Nice drive really. Got to the reserve and were paying to get in…citizen price-500 Kwacha, residents price- 1200 Kwacha, tourist price- 2800 Kwacha. Julia said that we were all here as volunteer workers for 6 months (averaged out it was true) and could we get the resident price. No problem! Yeah for negotiations. Within 3 minutes of entering the park we saw a herd of zebras. Then some impala. Not bad. Stopped at an overlook of the waterfall coming from the dam—impressive. Continue on and around a corner—an elephant! We back up slowly and then we see the rest of the family come to the water hole. Spraying mud on themselves—they take turns at the water. There were 2 baby elephants as well. And then we saw the bull. He was enormous! We were taking pictures like crazy and then I heard someone ask where’d the bull go? And then we saw him—coming toward us—so we left—got the car moving and went on. That was too cool. Next stop was Mvuu spot (mvuu is Chichewa for hippo) and sure enough in the middle of the river were a group of hippos. We heard them roar and watched them yawn. Other wildlife we saw: hartebeest, impala, nyala, turtle, impala, buffalo, baboons, impala, waterbuck and warthog. In the afternoon we went to the dry side of the park—no longer sure why as the animals of course were all near the water. The elephants were seen again as we were on our way back to the gate. As did a fleeting impression of zebra (they don’t stick around long). The elephants were about 8 yards away from us when we jumped in the car to leave…that’s a little too close for comfort