One of the last stops on our Zimbabwe road trip was Mana Pools National Park: another safari!! Yea!! 🙂
What is the difference between Mana Pools and the other parks? Mana Pools is special because it is not gated. This means that even the camp sites are not gated (or protected from wild animals)…could be cool or scary. I had a combination of both feelings. Mostly “This is awesome!” Also you are allowed to step out of your vehicle all throughout the park and basically walk around freely, with caution, of course. In all the other parks, the rule was that you were only to stay in your car.
Mana Pools is very difficult to get to if you don’t have your own car. The entrance is many 70 kilometers away from the first camp. I think we drove another 2 hours (due to road conditions, and it was dry, if it had been raining, it would have taken another hour, I think) from entrance to Nyamepi Camp. Plus, you must pay the park fee and get a permit before you enter the park, and the administration office is easy to find, but it is quite a few kilometers south of the park entrance, the office will be on your left hand side. If I remember correctly, it is another 20 minute drive to the park entrance. So don’t forget to get the permit or you will have to drive back to get it. Also, there are no facilities (like a grocer) in the park, so you must be sure to pack enough food and water to last as long as you want to stay at the park. But leave the fruits because animals, especially elephants and monkeys love those.
Once in main camp, you can choose from camping to pretty luxurious housing with kitchen and all that good stuff. We opted for camping, the more affordable choice. Camping along the river is much more expensive than camping further away from the water. We were there at low season, however, so that it didn’t matter if we weren’t camping along the river, because we had a good 360° view of the campgrounds due to the lack of visitors.
As soon as we got to the campgrouds, an elephant walked and sniffed arround the area. He walked right up to (the only other) campers! We got about 3 to 5 meters away. It was surreal! What an experience! If you do encounter anything like that, don’t make sudden movements and be as still as possible.
This encounter with the elephant changed “This is awesome!” to “OMG!! What if we get trampled at night while we sleep?!” I already knew that we needed a type of bonfire to “protect” our camp. But it was 37°!!! It was way too hot for a cozy evening with the fire. So I asked the ranger how safe it really was to sleep on the campgrounds. He assured me that there were no lions anyway, so that was good news. Plus, if we stay in our tent and it is closed, nothing would go in there and animals would go around the tent.
So I mustered up all of my courage and agreed to sleep in the tent for the evening. And for safe measure, I made Thomas set up a fire. I slept well that night….until I heard rustling around our tent. I tried to ignore it, but I swear it was getting closer and then the tent started to move ever so slightly. And then I just couldn’t get back to sleep: whatever was out there wouldn’t leave. I was kind of freaking out! So I woke Thomas up and convinced him to spend the night in the car. 🙂 Sleeping in the car was not exactly comfortable, but I was at least able to sleep.
The next day, we headed out for a drive around the park. The park really is huge. You could spend hours and hours just driving around. Since it was off-season, we didn’t see too many animals, or different animals than the ones we had previously seen at other parks.
We had put in two full days of drving and we decided to end our safari adventure at Mana Pools. While checking out, one of the rangers asked us if we could take him to the main road. Most of the rangers don’t have their own cars and have to figure out how to get into the park for work. And to get back home, of course. Most of them work for weeks at a time and then go home for a few days. It must be quite a hassle to figure out how to get to work and back home every time you need to work! There are no public transportation that goes into the park and not much public transportation heading out towards Mana Pools. Our guide was also responsible for capturing (or stopping them killing the animals) poachers. There is a huge problem with poachers and many animals are killed every year. Part of the problem is also that the park is not gated, which makes it easier for poachers to enter unnoticed.
We dropped off our passenger once we got to the main road and we headed off to our next adventure….sad that that was our last safari in Zimbabwe but also a smile on our face thinking about all the beautiful wild animals we saw in Zimbabwe.
moments to create 