{"id":11400,"date":"2015-11-03T09:17:35","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T09:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=11400"},"modified":"2015-11-03T09:17:35","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T09:17:35","slug":"irish-newspaper-glorifies-malawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2015\/11\/03\/irish-newspaper-glorifies-malawi\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish newspaper glorifies Malawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland\u2019s famous newspaper, The Independent, <\/em>has given Malawi a rare positive review of its tourism attractiveness, describing the country as \u201cthe rising star of African safari\u201d whose renewed efforts to protect wildlife have started paying dividends.<\/p>\n

The article, under the headline \u201cForget Kenya and South Africa: Malawi is the rising star of Africa Safaris\u201d<\/em>, was published over the weekend and has been written by renowned travel writer Isabel Conway who was in the country recently on an expedition that took her from Lilongwe to Chikwawa district.<\/p>\n

She observed that while Jeeps pile through popular safari parks in Kenya and South Africa, Malawi remains unspoiled where wilderness parks and game reserves – decimated in the past by poaching – are thriving again.<\/p>\n

\u201cMalawi is a magical road less travelled,\u201d writes Conway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis small, landlocked East African country is Ebola-free and dedicated to the protection of its wildlife with zero tolerance for poachers, ivory and exotic species smugglers,\u201d says Conway, in the article, adding: \u201cThen I experience another first – a great big smile and a verbal welcome from an immigration official.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Lilongwe, she visited the old town market where she thought that as \u201ca woman and only foreign face in a milling male crowd\u201d, she would be pushed and stared at.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, the men smiled and shouted out greetings. One gentleman even steadies me as I slip over a pile of fish entrails,\u201d writes Conway.<\/p>\n

She later visited Lake Malawi where she rode an inflatable boat to thickly-forested Nankoma Island and lodges at a \u201cdeserted but romantic Blue Zebra Island Lodge\u201d famed for bird watching at the Unesco World Heritage-protected marine park.<\/p>\n

Down south, she visit a 500- acre private game park Game Haven Lodge and Mbawa Country Club in Thyolo, where she saw Nyala, waterbuck, impala, eland and occasionally giraffe wandering across the golf course greens.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the nearby Satemwa tea plantation estate is Huntingdon House – a relic of colonial days. Once a family home, it is now an elegant boutique hotel with terrific food, set among manicured lawns, blue gum trees and formal gardens,\u201d writes Conway.<\/p>\n

Further down in Chikwawa, Conway visited Majete Wildlife Reserve and spends a night in a tented chalet in \u201cauthentic Thawale Lodge\u201d which, she observes, is completely unfenced with an open-air bathroom looking out on a floodlit waterhole.<\/p>\n

Conway admits that given the Ebola crisis in Africa and sporadic terrorist attacks in Kenya, prospective travelers may be nervous or wary about visiting sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reality, however, Ebola-affected areas are as far away from East Africa as London, while conflict zones can be thousands of miles removed from the places tourists go,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ireland\u2019s famous newspaper, The Independent, has given Malawi a rare positive review of its tourism attractiveness, describing the country as \u201cthe rising star of African safari\u201d whose renewed efforts to protect wildlife have started paying dividends. The article, under the headline \u201cForget Kenya and South Africa: Malawi is the rising star of Africa Safaris\u201d, was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}