Malawi

So I spent a few days in Malawi which turned out to be really enjoyable. On Thursday on the way to Lilongwe, we had to stop and wait on the side of the road for about twenty minutes so that the president of Malawi could go by. That was a rather neat experience, although apparently it's really not all that uncommon.

I spent a couple days in Lilongwe.  We went shopping and ate at a couple really great restaurants. It was fun to see a new place. On Sunday, we went to a Baptist church in Lilongwe and it was really great to have worship and a sermon in English.

After church we picked up a family at the airport and then headed to Liwonde where there is a game park. Early Monday morning (about 5:30am) we got up and headed out to the game park after a quick breakfast. 

As we drove through the game park we were able to sit on top of the car on the luggage rack. That was really a lot of fun and allowed us to see so much. We saw warthog, impala, water buck, baboons, etc. as we drove. The scenery was also spectacular.  After about an hour or so of driving we saw a herd of elephants. They were moving through the trees and some of the younger ones looked at the car. Then suddenly we saw a huge elephant in the middle of the road ahead of us. He was a big elephant. We drove a little closer and just watched him as he stood there and then slowly meandered off the road and into the bush. So cool!!!

Shortly after 9am we stopped at a resort/hotel that is inside the park to stretch our legs and use a toilet. We ended up decided to do the boat tour there and it was totally worth every minute. We saw tons of hippos and crocodiles, as well as two herds of elephants, and lots of birds including two fishing owls which are really rare to see. At one point on the boat tour we got near a large crocodile and it jumped toward the boat into the river! I was in the front of the boat and jumped back. It was funny. In the first herd of elephants we saw a really small baby which was stumbling through the mud, it was adorable.

The president of Malawi is in one of those cars.

Some of the landscape in the park.

Crocodile. Not sure if that's the one that freaked me out or not.

Baby elephant

Elephant in the middle of the road. He was huge.

Hippos, birds, warthogs....Africa :)

I took 200 pictures in the park, but unfortunately it takes too long to upload many onto here. But I picked a few of the better ones :)