Lengwe National Park

A park on the rebound

Right in the south of the country is Lengwe National Park. This park has a bit of a sad history as poaching has devastated its wildlife in the past and it has been much neglected over the years. However, it is starting to attract fresh interest from various conservational bodies and as such, the future prospects for this very attractive little pocket of southern Malawi look set to improve.

Lengwe is the most northerly place in Africa where one can find the beautiful striped-backed nyala antelope. Other animals include the lovely kudu, common duiker, Livingstone’s suni, impala and bushbuck. Blue monkeys, warthogs, bushpigs and buffalo also live here. The park has amazing birdlife with such gems as the black and white fly-catcher and the gorgeous bush-shrike, crested guinea fowl, the barred cuckoo and the beautiful, richly coloured Böhm’s bee-eater.

This is a great park to visit as part of a self drive safari and, while you won’t be confronted by enormous numbers of big game here, it is a lovely area and well worth a visit. The waterholes and hides are rewarding places to spy game and the mixture of thicket and open ground makes for good visibility.