The Makokola Retreat is Malawi’s foremost beach resort. A beach resort in Malawi? Surely, unlikely given that Malawi is a landlocked country. That would be forgetting, though, Lake Malawi “discovered” by David Livingstone in 1859 and, at 360 miles long the size of an inland sea with more species of fish than any other lake in the world.
At its edge and with some of its loveliest golden beaches, Makokola Retreat offers everything you’d find at a “real” seaside resort: spa treatments and water sports, gym and beach volleyball, beachside restaurant, a choice of pools, a gelateria, tennis courts and even a startlingly beautiful golf course. They also have one or two quite unique experiences, my favourite being feeding the eagles. A short ride by speedboat takes you to Bird Island and some remarkably colourful fish, all very visible in the clear water where you can snorkel with them, too. But the fish eagles are the biggest draw – huge pied birds and formidable aerialists that dive for the fish (helpfully provided by the resort) you throw in the air for them.
Back, though, to that spa, newly reopened and with a relaxed, tropical setting. You can have treatments in your room but the rooms in the spa are too good to miss, open to catch the breeze from the lake and with the cries of birds and monkeys rather than soothing music as your sound backdrop. There’s a good spa menu with couples’ treatments (this is quite the honeymoon spot) and a variety of massages, body treatments and facials, as well as all the basics like manicures and pedicures.
I decided to start with something very local. The salt scrub at Le Spa uses local sand from the lakeside suspended in coconut oil so it gives back some moisture while taking off the top layer of dead skin and it does indeed feel beautifully smooth afterwards. Therapist Lennia made this more of a massage with plenty of soothing movements – very much needed after a couple of days on Malawi’s famously pot-holed roads.
After this first very local treatment, I was perhaps expecting the Hydrating Facial to be equally simple but nothing could have been further from the truth. So, while the products come from South Africa and are registered organic (and they do have some beautiful smells), there is also some very high tech going on. This time my therapist was Memory and she started with several layers of cleansing as well as a scrub and then used first a suction tool (it feels a bit like your face is being hoovered) that removes impurities and then another machine that gives the skin a bit of a lift. Throughout this part of the facial, there was a constant play of steam over the face that opens the pores and makes all the rest of the applied products so much more effective.
After all this, she painted on a mask that sets and, while it’s doing that, I had a long and very pleasant scalp massage. Once the mask had become sufficiently hardened, Memory peeled it off, did another cleanse and tone and applied a second mask that did its stuff this time, under a red light. Then serum, more red light, and finally everything was removed, and I’m feeling well and truly hydrated.
Being in Africa, your skin needs looking after but that’s clearly not the only reason to be here. And, as well as the pleasant resort of Makokola, you can also spend your time on safari and it’s really not far from the lake. So, you can get back on those roads for a few hours or take one of the most pleasurable transfers I can imagine – by boat to the lovely safari camp of Mvuu (it means hippos and there are plenty of them). There is a speedboat that takes an hour or so but I’d recommend the longer version (more like six) that offers a unique way of seeing the country and its water-based wildlife.
Camp Mvuu is in the Liwonde National Park and I arrive in the early afternoon. I’m engrossed watching an open-billed stork dig mussels from the lagoon – so shallow at the end of the summer that the water barely reaches his knees – when my guide, Chifundo, tells me we’re ready to go. The game haul on that first drive is astonishing. There are baboons and waterbuck and an awful lot of birds – oxpeckers removing ticks off grateful impala, acrobatic Bateleur eagles, bee-eaters and hornbills and a confusion (one of the most delightful of collective nouns) of guinea fowl.
It’s not long, though, before we come across the lions, snoozing in the afternoon sun and – if the paw movements are anything to go by – dreaming of yesterday’s hunt. Groups of impala and waterbucks watch them as intently as we do, ready to flee at the first movement. Later, we join a family of elephants mixed with buffalo, dozens of pure white egrets picking through the earth for titbits churned up by their footfall.
Dusk falls (G&T time) as we watch them and hear the first roars – sounding more like groans, in reality – of the lions waking from their afternoon slumbers. Driving with the spotlight on through the night, there are civets and jackals, a porcupine and a stalking cheetah and even a pair of mating lions (there’s not much privacy in the bush).
Mvuu is unfenced so you do get visitors. There were baboons all over my terrace and I found a kudu on the path back to my chalet after the morning drive. The Liwonde National Park is 212 square miles of woodlands and savannah but, along with the other small camps here, there’s capacity only for some 60 overnight visitors – no surprise then that you see so few people on your game drives. And not just drives. There are boat safaris, too, as the Shire River here is wide and slow with vast numbers of hippos and crocodiles and a staggering variety of birds, the most unlikely being the swallows who built their nest inside the boat and flew in over our heads to feed their young as we sailed.
Beach? Safari? Spa? There can’t be too many countries that offer all of this. In fact, I can’t think of a single one, except Malawi.
cazenove+loyd (cazloyd.com) offers a 9-night trip to Malawi from £4,950 pp (based on two sharing), including full-board accommodation at Mkulumadzi Lodge, Huntingdon House, Sunbird Ku Chawe Inn, Mvuu Camp and Makokola Retreat. Price also includes return international flights from London to Blantyre (Economy), all domestic flights, all safari experiences, park fees and transfers. Price based on travel between April and November.
For more information about Malawi, including details of Liwonde National Park, and to start planning your trip, please visit the official tourism website at www.malawitourism.com.
