Eventra Bespoke — Southern Africa — Malawi
Lake Malawi seen from a dhow as the sun rises over the Mozambique shore. Elephant at the Shire River at dusk in Liwonde. The tea estates of Mulanje below the great massif. Malawi is Africa's best-kept secret — genuinely warm, genuinely off the beaten track, and entirely extraordinary.
Africa's Best-Kept Secret
Malawi is one of Africa's smallest countries and one of its most rewarding — a place where the warmth of welcome is something visitors comment on universally, where the pace is unhurried, and where the landscapes range from the vast freshwater sea of Lake Malawi to the granite massif of Mount Mulanje rising 3,000 metres above the surrounding tea estates. For travellers who have visited most of the continent's better-known destinations, Malawi offers something rare: genuine discovery.
Lake Malawi, which covers approximately a third of the country's surface area and forms its eastern border with Mozambique and Tanzania, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site containing more species of freshwater fish than any other lake on earth. The cichlids that populate its rocky shores in extraordinary variety — over 850 species, most found nowhere else — draw divers and snorkellers from around the world to water of remarkable clarity and warmth. Liwonde National Park, managed by African Parks since 2015, has undergone a transformation that has seen elephant, lion, and rhino return to a park that had lost much of its wildlife to poaching. The result is one of Africa's most remarkable conservation success stories — and one of its more surprising safari destinations.
What to Experience
Freshwater Sea
Lake Malawi is the ninth largest lake in the world and the third largest in Africa — a freshwater sea 580 kilometres long that forms the country's eastern border and shapes its identity entirely. The lake's waters, warmed year-round to around 27 degrees Celsius and clear to depths of several metres, support a diversity of cichlid fish found nowhere else on earth. Snorkelling and diving in the lake — particularly at Cape Maclear and the Likoma Islands — reveals an underwater world of extraordinary variety and colour. The lake's shores offer a combination of lodge accommodation, sailing, kayaking, and the simplest pleasures of warm water and unhurried time.
Wildlife Recovery
Liwonde is one of Africa's most remarkable conservation recovery stories — a national park on the Shire River that had been devastated by poaching and, since its handover to African Parks in 2015, has been transformed into one of southern Africa's most compelling safari destinations. Elephant, hippo, crocodile, sable antelope, and waterbuck have recovered strongly. Black rhino were reintroduced from South Africa. Lion were brought back in 2018. The park's river setting, where the Shire flows slowly through riverine forest and floodplain, adds a quality of atmosphere that makes game drives and boat safaris here genuinely distinctive. The lodges inside the park are small, well-run, and deeply connected to the landscape and the people around it.
Diving & Snorkelling
Cape Maclear, on the southern shore of Lake Malawi within the Lake Malawi National Park, is the lake's most celebrated snorkelling and diving location — a protected area of rocky shoreline, sandy bays, and clear water that shelters an enormous variety of cichlid species. The Likoma Islands, on the Mozambique side of the lake, offer a more remote experience: a pair of small islands accessible by air or ferry, with lodge accommodation of considerable character and diving of equal quality to Cape Maclear in entirely quieter surroundings. Kaya Mawa on Likoma Island is one of the most thoughtfully designed lodges in Africa.
Mountain Walking
Mount Mulanje — the Mulanje Massif — rises abruptly from the surrounding tea estates in southern Malawi to reach 3,002 metres at Sapitwa, the highest point in central Africa south of Kilimanjaro. The massif, a UNESCO-designated area, offers some of the finest walking and trekking in southern Africa: a network of hut-to-hut trails through cedar forest, across open plateau, and along the great rock faces that give Mulanje its dramatic character. The massif can be combined with Liwonde and Lake Malawi in a journey that moves through three entirely different Malawian landscapes in quick succession — a combination that makes the country's variety immediately apparent.
Begin Here
Tell us whether it is the lake, Liwonde, Mulanje, or all three that draws you. Eventra designs Malawi journeys for travellers looking for something genuinely off the beaten track.
Design Your Journey
