Warning: Malawi incoming

I just got back from Malawi, if you couldn’t tell by the mess of observations I managed to make on the plane. These are barely a drop in the bucket—I managed to take so many photos my camera had to start counting from 0 again. Over 10,000 photos! Granted, I was shooting in burst mode for most of the trip (also got MUCH better at using the camera, so don’t be alarmed by how crappy the current observations are), but even overestimating that I took 100 shots for every species, that is still about 1200 observations.

So, a warning to all who follow me. Expect a lot of African bugs in the coming days/weeks.

It was an amazing trip, and I HIGHLY recommend vacationing at Mvuu lodge in Liwonde National Park. We spent most our time there, and I just can’t get over it. I have never had too much to eat on vacation (strange vegan diet, etc), but the chef there worked miracles. And the guides, David and Samuel, are FANTASTIC. Samuel especially is a birding savant. Without binoculars, he would see a little speck in a tree and say exactly what species it was before any of us could even find it with binoculars. He even saw a pangolin in the park once, but the people he was guiding didn’t even take a picture of it, which prompted him to start carrying a camera with him everywhere. The park is on the Shire River, so there are a ton of bird species there. The only downside to the park is all the wild animals (especially hippos and elephants) graze on the grass at night, so my nighttime bug hunting excursions were very brief and incomplete, and limited to what I could find around my doorway.

The trip organizer, Jordan Price at Travis Audubon, did a fantastic job organizing this SUPER AFFORDABLE trip. For well under $5000 (including round-trip airfare), we spent 10 days with the best birders and naturalists in the country. This was his first time organizing a trip like this, and he is planning to do many more. We had people from Oregon and Arizona joining us Texans, so anybody is welcome. Let me know if you want his contact info, and he can add you to his safari mailing list.

Posted on November 15, 2017 03:11 PM by nanofishology