Walking on Malawi’s Zomba Plateau 

After a few weeks on the beautiful Lake Malawi, we were excited to lace up our boots and be walking again. From Cape Maclear we made our way to Zomba and after a delicious cup of coffee at The African Heritage Cafe and some food shopping in town, we found a taxi to take us up to the plateau.

The plateau isn’t far from town and it was a windy road up past many berry sellers with their baskets of raspberries, mulberries and gooseberries. We were  camping at Trout Farm –  a lovely campsite in the forest that was busy with lots of people enjoying a Sunday picnic.
Delicious!

There are loads of trails on the plateau with many marked on maps.me so we decided not to take a guide. We took a short late afternoon stroll through the pine forest and the next day we walked past Williams Falls and onto the Queen’s and Emperor’s viewpoints.

The Queen Mother visited in 1957 and Emperor Hailselassie in 1965 and both have little benches and commerative signs. The morning had started bright and clear but by the time we reached the viewpoints the clouds had rolled in. We decided to sit and wait it out and thankfully the clouds lifted and we enjoyed views of Zomba town and various peaks stretching as far as the Mulanje Mountains (whose outlines we could see in the haze and where we were headed next).

After lunch back at our campsite, it was a short, steep walk down the potato path to Casa Rossa to camp in their lovely garden with the blue monkeys, and enjoy a delicious treat meal – some divine authentic Italian cooking and a bottle of wine.
 

Practical Information

The walking is very accessible and there is no need for a guide although it might be nice to have one for a longer walk.

There are no national park fees and the campsite was only MkW3,000/person ($4).

We hired a taxi in town for MkW5,000 ($7) and walked back down to Cassa Rosa.

Comments

2 Comments
  1. posted by
    Malawi Places
    May 6, 2018 Reply

    That was a good price for a taxi up I think.

    • posted by
      Jumping Jazza
      May 12, 2018 Reply

      We bargained!

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