BEYOND the shores of Lake Malawi, known for boutique eco-resorts and well-heeled international tourists, there’s another Malawi — a whole country, if a tiny one, of chaotic and lively urban centers, green hills, tea plantations, high mountains and game parks blessedly free of safari jeep traffic jams.
When Madonna first showed interest in adopting a child from this wedge of a nation between Zambia , Mozambique and Tanzania , Americans scrambled to find it on a map. If reporters, or travel agents, remembered anything about it at all, it was the lake, the third-largest freshwater body in Africa , increasingly popular as a remote getaway from Europe and the United States . But in just a few days of driving in southern Malawi, covering about 400 miles in total, the traveler can find a compact experience embracing much of what the wider world thinks of as intrinsically African.
Although the roads can sometimes be rough, in general the country proves an easy trip; English is widely spoken, in addition to vernacular languages like Chichewa, and Malawi boasts a vibrant, open democracy that hands out visas to American travelers on arrival.
The jumping-off point is Blantyre. My wife and I have started our Malawi treks there, taking time out to sightsee while she worked in the country doing medical research.
“Blantyre is like Malawi’s New York,” one Malawian friend told me, boasting of its commercial and cultural energy (and contrasting it with the politics-first capital, Lilongwe). Well, not exactly. In the daytime, Blantyre’s crowded streets throb: Malawi contains 14 million people in its cramped land area. Vendors hawk avocadoes, bananas and cellphone cards, edging up to the windows of your car; traffic police try to stop wild drivers. But by 6 in the evening, the city turns quiet as most Malawians head home to an early dinner.
Still, with its hilly topography and a sizable expatriate population, Blantyre boasts several “Out of Africa”-esque restaurants, where you can sit on an open-air terrace and sip a late afternoon Malawi-style gin and tonic, sweeter and more fragrant than the American version.
Earlier this year at Chez Maky’s, in the lush hills just outside downtown, we joined Malawian businesspeople unwinding for the day with gin or a cup of homegrown coffee. Though it hasn’t exactly colonized Starbucks, Malawi’s mzuzu coffee, with a chocolaty, fruity flavor, holds its own with better-known African cups of joe. From a neighboring residence, local music , with lyrics in Chichewa and jangling bells that resemble calypso, filtered into the restaurant. Waiters dropped by to chat, constantly bending over to play with our 8-month-old baby, Caleb. Not for nothing is Malawi called “the warm heart of Africa” by many Malawians, as well as by the tour companies that promote it.
From Blantyre, the Thyolo region lies about 25 miles southeast on a good, though winding, road. Everywhere in Malawi, it’s advisable to hire a car and driver (for about $30 a day) rather than to try to travel on your own in a rental car. Traffic weaves wildly, and a smooth paved surface can suddenly turn rough. On one of our trips, we were on a major highway and hit a detour that suddenly took us on a rutted dirt track through the center of a village of tiny thatched huts, their occupants obviously surprised to find traffic barreling through their town.
Thyolo, home to tea plantations, reminds me of Sri Lanka ’s famed tea-growing highlands. On a colonial map of the country that I once bought in Blantyre, the British, who claimed the country as part of their empire until 1964, identified only the parts of Malawi suitable for coffee and tea cultivation, as if the rest of the nation did not exist.
The road winds and meanders up through rich green hills toward the plantations. Several of the larger plantations, like Satemwa Tea Estate, welcome overnight visitors, housing them in traditional planters’ bungalows. We stopped near one of the larger plantations to hike , with permission, through its grounds, and passed small bungalows, rows of tea bushes and Malawian women working the fields with woven baskets on their backs. Some toted additional baggage — babies tied on their backs with traditional Malawian chitenge, brightly patterned cloth. In the distance, Mount Mulanje, a sheer, rocky 9,800-foot peak studded with cliffs and small waterfalls, towered over the Thyolo region.
Heading north from Blantyre, in one trip you can pack in two of the country’s biggest attractions: the famous lake and Liwonde National Park .
It’s about 75 miles to the park, where, by the banks of the Shire River, Malawi is restoring game populations devastated by British hunters and, later, local poachers.
Few tourists visit Liwonde, and it retains a wildness tough to find in neighboring nations where animals have become almost conditioned to seeing tourists. Game-watching here is in the old-fashioned style, with no animals accustomed to performing. If you’re not on a paid safari tour, the best way to see the park is to take a boat, provided by Mvuu Camp, the main lodge in the park, along the Shire River. You’ll get no guarantees: you may see hordes of game or you may see nothing at all. Still, even in rainy season from December to March, which is not the best for seeing game, the animals don’t exactly hide: hippos wallow in the water and elephants slowly meander by the banks. In dry season, you’re likely to see antelope, zebra and crocodiles.
By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK