Nyika National Park
Nyika National Park |
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"It was so unlike anything else. It was deep in the heart of Africa, filled with the animal of Africa, and yet it was covered with the grasses, the flowers and colours of Europe."
Nyika is at once Malawi's largest park and one of the most unusual in the whole of Africa. It extends for about 3134 square km. This great plateau tilts gently from 2,500 meters in the west down to 2,100 meters in the east. The eastern border of the plateau forms the wall of the Great Rift Valley. Partly because of the height of the plateau, it is almost uninhabited except around its outer margins. The climate is greatly modified by altitude and on a cloud free night it can be distinctly cool with the possibility of ground frost in the dry season. It is wetter in the east than the west but usual seasonal variations apply. The relatively low temperatures of the plateau make it largely free of tsetse fly and mosquito. The scenery is reckoned to be some of the best in Central Africa and to say that it is spectacularly beautiful is not to resort to hyperbole. These great domes of whaleback like hills have gentle slopes despite their massive scale. It is as though the landscape had been sculptured by a giant. Everything around is dwarfed by the setting. Nyika is largely mountain grassland with patches of evergreen forest that are the remains of the great rain forest that used to cover the whole of Central Africa and now survive only in the Congo Basin and on the Nyika. Accommodation on the Nyika can be at the comfortable Chelinda Lodge, a new lodge that offers luxury accommodation in eight en-suite log cabins. Each room has its own fireplace to keep warm at night. Chelinda also offers a camp which even if slightly less luxurious than the lodge is perfectly adequate. |
