Getting around Malawi easy

•A continuation . . .

Lilongwe Nature Sanctuary

Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city, doesn’t exactly have the most exciting of reputations. Yet as someone who lived there, I have to disagree.

There’s a lot to see and do in Lilongwe! And at the top of my list is the Lilongwe Nature Sanctuary. The Lilongwe Wildlife Trust operates the nature sanctuary and it’s the only one of its kind in the country. It’s a remarkable piece of green space in the heart of the city and is well worth a visit.

I’m not the only one who loves this spot. I asked my friend and fellow travel writer Brianne Miers what she would recommend for someone visiting Malawi and she said: “I can share a recommendation for the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust facility in Lilongwe! You can tour it, go hiking, and there’s an amazing cafe. Also lots of volunteer opportunities.”

Appreciate history in Mangochi

The southern Malawian town of Mangochi was the first place I lived in Malawi, and it turned out to be a great ice-breaker. People would invariably tell me how lucky I was to live in such a great destination and they were absolutely right.

Mangochi is positioned at the southern tip of Lake Malawi and has access to all the usual lakeside activities and amenities such as hotels, resorts, and guest houses.

However, this beautiful location has a serious and, at times, very ugly past.

Mangochi was once home to an early slave market and, later, a colonial administrative center known as Fort Johnston under British rule.

Today, some interesting sites to appreciate include a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetary (next to the post office), a large mosque, a clock tower, a memorial to a tragic shipwreck, and a small museum.

Shop for carvings

Malawi offers some of the finest wooden handicrafts and carvings in southern Africa.

A signature item is the chief’s chair. You’ll find them in every size imaginable, from the gigantic to the tiny. I came home with two medium-large size chairs (which I did indeed use to sit in for years and now are more ornamental), and it’s one of the best buys I’ve ever made.

In case you’re wondering what you’d do with the teeny-tiny chairs, you can use them for more than just decoration.

I’ve seen them in hotel bathrooms around Malawi as a cute way to stack toilet paper and keep it off the floor!

Other items to look out for include end tables with tripod-style legs and removable, circular table tops which are reversible (mine have animal carvings on one side and game board tops on the other). I love my palm-sized wooden elephant but I slightly regret not getting a giant giraffe some 10 plus feet tall.

How I would have got would have done with it

But it was gorgeous.

Some great places to shop include Lilongwe’s old town (next to the post office), Nkhata Bay, and Senga Bay. — Travel Awaits. it home, what I — who knows?