Expert Reviews
Get out of the vehicle
For a long time viewed by many as just a stopover on the road to the big name destinations of Bwindi (for gorillas) and Queen Elizabeth (for safaris), Lake Mburo has matured as a destination in its own right. Nubian giraffes translocated from Murchison Falls National Park are breeding successfully...
A Luxury Lodge With Spellbinding Landscapes and Breathtaking Trekking
Not all safaris are about wildlife, and I was drawn to Ts’ehlanyane National Park by its reputation as wonderful hiking country. It didn’t disappoint and just by way of a bonus I had some delightful sightings of mongoose, jackal, rock hyrax and (on every morning I was there) small herds of...
A Wildlife Nirvana on the Shores of Lake Kariba
Matusadona is one of southern Africa’s most remote and beautiful national parks. It extends southward from Kariba, the world's largest humanmade lake, and most game viewing takes place on the wide grassy floodplain that divides the lakeshore from the wooded mountains of the Zambezi Escarpment. As...
Walking with Elephants
It seems sacrilegious to say so, but after having heard so much about Mana Pools over the years, when I did finally get to visit this legendary park in 2023, the reality was slightly disappointing. To be fair, this is largely because my expectations had been raised sky high. One of my favorite parks...
Zimbabwe’s Great Forgotten Wilderness
Gonarezhou is Zimbabwe’s most underrated safari destination. Despite being home to all the Big Five, this Zimbabwean component of the 100,000km2 Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (which also incorporates South Africa’s Kruger National Park) is included on very few safari itineraries. This is...
An Oasis for Rhinos
If it were not for the combined parks of Hluhluwe-iMfolozi in South Africa’s KZN province, it’s probably fair to say that we might not have rhinos in the wild today – at least not in southern Africa. During the 1980s, when illegal rhino hunting was at crisis levels, Hluhluwe-iMfolozi’s...
Walking with Elephants
mighty Zambezi River. This wilderness extends across the river into Lower Zambezi National Park in Zambia, with the backdrop of the Zambezi escarpment in the distance. The park is very seasonal. While animals disperse and lodges close in the wet season, the riverfront area teems with wildlife in...
Abundant Wildlife & a Vast Salt Pan
With its arid scrublands, the searing, barren expanses of Etosha Pan and rather impersonal rest camps, it’s easy to underestimate Etosha. Yet, allow some time to get to know the park and its appeal is guaranteed to grow. One of the main draws is convenient access to a truly impressive array of...
Rwanda’s Phoenix Forest
Gazetted in 2016, Gishwati-Mukura is not only the newest national park in Rwanda, but also by far the smallest and the most affected by human encroachment. Despite this, the very existence of the park represents an exciting development in Rwandan conservation and ecotourism, as it was motivated in...
Self-driving in North Luangwa
North Luangwa is the big, off-the-beaten-track sister park of South Luangwa, Zambia’s most popular wildlife destination. The park has a very limited road network and only a few very rustic, but high-end, camps. Most people fly in and the focus is on walking safaris. Wildlife is a bit more skittish...
Zambia’s only Big Five safari destination
This remote and relatively little-visited northern counterpart to the ever-popular South Luangwa National Park is bounded by the Luangwa River to the east and the Rift Valley escarpment to the west. North Luangwa supports a similar range of wildlife to its southern neighbor, including plentiful...
A Diverse Area of Reserves & Wildlife
This 4,000km2/1,544mi2 patchwork of private and publicly owned land was designated a Unesco Biosphere Reserve in 2001. The park protects part of the Waterberg Mountains, an ancient predominantly sandstone watershed incised by four major rivers. The area is made up of many different parts that are...
Wildlife-rich wilderness
Nyerere National Park (Selous) may be facing difficult times, with a dam being built in the heart of it, but it remains one of East Africa’s most prolific parks. With a series of palm-fringed lakes at its heart, Nyerere NP is simply gorgeous. I’ve never seen more giraffes in one place than I...
Ruaha National Park
Visitors are often surprised to learn that Ruaha is bigger than the Serengeti. At more than 20,000km2/7,700mi2, this is Tanzania’s second-largest national park (after Nyerere) and one of those safari destinations that tends to attract the ‘best-kept secret’ epithet. It’s true that for such a...
Eastern Cape’s Best Big Five Safari Location…With Its Share of Special Sightings
The three days I spent in this wonderfully exclusive park (where you rarely see another vehicle) raised my opinion of South Africa’s private parks. In this era when rhinos are critically endangered, it comes as an inestimable privilege to be able to actually see these magnificent creatures (both...
A North Star
North Luangwa is one of the most uncommercialized parks I’ve visited. There are only a couple of camps here along the banks of the Mwaleshi River. The main drawcard for North Luangwa compared to its bigger sister South Luangwa is the sense of bush solitude it evokes in a raw and genuine...
Eswatini’s Royal flagship park
With 200km/124mi of game-driving tracks, Hlane Royal National Park is Eswatini’s (formerly Swaziland) biggest protected area and allows self-drive access as well as guided safaris either in vehicles, on-foot or by cycle. Since this is officially the royal park, Hlane provides the habitat for...
A chance to see wild dogs
This beautiful park can be quite busy with self-drivers, campers, mobile safaris and a large number of lodges. But it feels like there is room for everyone, and the Big Five can often be seen. My absolute highlight was a wonderful sighting of a pack of wild dogs. About 35 or 40 dogs with their pups....
Loving Liwonde!
I was in Liwonde for the first day of conservation NGO African Parks’ historic elephant relocations, when they started a huge operation to move 500 pachyderms to Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve. It was my job to look after a darted elephant by monitoring her breathing while she was under sedation, and...
Walk, cycle or run in nature
Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary is the closest park to Mbabane and, because of that, it can get much busier than the other parks. There are several affordable accommodation options and many activities to choose from, which makes for a popular family getaway, though the dearth of large mammals makes it a...
Elephant & Bird Nirvana
Maputo National Park is the most accessible place to see wildlife in southern Mozambique. This rewarding and underrated safari destination lies about 1.5 hours’ drive south of the Mozambican capital Maputo, and is even closer to Ponto do Ouro, a popular beach resort that practically borders South...
A Resurgent Gem
When I first visited Akagera in 2000, it was barely functional, suffered badly from encroachment and poaching, and seemed destined to become one of those forgotten African parks that exist only on maps and in the statute books. The situation deteriorated over the next few years, but was reversed in...
Elephants and more in the forests
Nkhotakota is a rising star among Malawi’s major reserves, following African Parks’ historic translocation of over 500 elephants and 1400 game animals from Majete Wildlife Reserve and Liwonde National Park. Whereas the 1800km² of dense miombo forests was once poached empty, I heard elephants...
Riverside birdlife and conservation stories
Although lacking the full Big Five complement, this African Parks-run reserve is one of Malawi’s best safari destinations, with the country’s largest populations of elephant (more than 500) and endangered black rhino (Liwonde’s rhino sanctuary recently welcomed two calves). Thanks to the Shire...
Safari activities extravaganza
Proclaimed in 1960, Mlilwane means ‘little fire’ and is a reference to the numerous fires started by lightning strikes in the area. At 4560 hectares, this relatively small wildlife refuge was originally established as a stronghold to save the last of Eswatini’s vanishing wildlife. Nowadays,...
Wilderness reborn
Akagera is the only protected area offering traditional Big Five safaris in Rwanda. It boasts good wildlife opportunities, although not on quite the same scale as other iconic East African parks. Unlike the densely forested protected areas elsewhere in the country, Akagera is a typical savannah park...
A sanctuary offering fun bush adventures and the smaller species of game
At the end of the Ezulwini Valley (‘Valley of Heaven’), 45-sq-km Mlilwane is Eswatini’s (formerly Swaziland) oldest protected area, founded by the Reilly family in 1961. The terrain is mainly grasslands and open floodplains stretching up to the striking granite peak of Nyonyane Mountain...
A lowland bushveld park that’s home to the largest herds of game in this tiny kingdom
Covering around 300-sq-km and the largest park in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Hlane features grassland, shallow pans and tracts of hardwood trees. The name means ‘wilderness’ and the ‘Royal’ part is derived from the fact that it’s held in trust by King Mswati III. I found it a very easy...
Wild Arid Heartland
Situated in the heart of Botswana, the CKGR is vast. It is a semi-desert with much of it covered in acacia scrub together with a series of open pans. At first sight the CKGR can seem rather underwhelming. You come here for the wilderness experience, rather than expecting to see lots of wildlife....
A wildlife utopia brings out the worst in tourism
Famed the world over for its magnificent wildlife, and site of the annual Great Migration, I had been looking forward for a long time to a safari in the Masai Mara. Massive numbers of grazers and browsers here support a huge population of predators and most visitors will have a wildlife sighting...
Manyeleti: Private Kruger Safaris
Part of the Greater Kruger ecosystem, Manyeleti – which was one of very few reserves open to blacks during the dark decades of apartheid – has terrific wildlife that often wanders in from the national park to the east. That said, the slightly denser foliage can mean that you have to work a...
A Zambian Wilderness Rediscovered
This remote protected area offers one of the finest wilderness experiences in Zambia, if not Africa itself. Frankfurt Zoological Society has done a phenomenal job of protecting and resurrecting this iconic national park. There are only a couple of seasonal fly-in bush camps (focusing on first-rate...
Safari chic with a conservation vision
Ever since the opening of its first lodge, in 1994, Singita’s Ebony, Boulders and Lebombo lodges have been universally acclaimed as the gold standard for high-end, low-impact, ultra-luxury African safaris. More recently Singita’s award winning safari lodges and exceptional wildlife experiences...
Lake Manyara: Lions in Trees
This thin sliver of a park is often bypassed in the rush between Tarangire and Ngorongoro and the Serengeti, but that would be a mistake. For a start, the dramatic escarpment that forms the western wall of the Great Rift Valley makes this one of the easiest places in East Africa to get a sense of...
A river runs through it…
As its name suggests, this park is dominated by the mighty Zambezi which marks its southern border, cutting a swathe through vast floodplains. It attracts a mass of wildlife, particularly huge herds of elephants easily seen on the riverbanks, along with fabulous birdlife. The Zambezi escarpment...
Pure and peaceful wilderness
Nyerere National Park (formerly Selous) won’t appeal to the first-time safari-goer simply because its vastness means animals are not seen easily around every bend on a game drive. It doesn’t mean that they are not there of course; far from it, this wilderness is home to a huge diversity and...
The Most Beautiful Place in Africa
The Okavango Delta, a huge water world of marshes, shifting channels, shape-changing islands and reed shrouded natural canals is, in my opinion, quite simply the most beautiful corner of Africa. To see it from the air, as you fly into a remote dirt airstrip on a light plane (which is how most people...
The Mysterious Savuti Channel
Linyanti Reserve lies to the west of the well-known Chobe National Park. It shares many of the same pleasures as Chobe: the extraordinary concentrations of elephants, the vast black herds of buffalo and a landscape that, like much of Botswana, see-saws back and forth between dry, burnt and hard and...
Walk With Giants
Zimbabwe’s premier wilderness area was once one of the biggest names in African safaris. But as Zimbabwe has languished in the doldrums and the years have ticked by, Hwange has, by and large, fallen off the mainstream safari radar. The thing is, although this huge park is no longer cool with human...
Elephants on the March
Tarangire National Park is the oft-overlooked park on Tanzania’s renowned northern ‘safari circuit’. Perhaps when you have the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater fighting in the same corner for tourism attention that’s not a surprise, but it’s certainly a shame. Tarangire covers a diverse...
The pinnacle of iconic African everything…
Kenya has a reputation as the primary African Safari destination, and I can’t find myself arguing against that. If you yearn, as I do, for vast open landscapes dotted with acacia trees under which cheetahs lounge and lions roar, then the Maasai Mara is a top pick for you. The country boasts a...
Not just a Safari destination
South Africa boasts an array of attractions. It's home to renowned Big-5 national parks like Kruger, Hluhluwe-imfolozi, Addo, and Pilanesberg, as well as exclusive private reserves such as Sabi Sands, Phinda, Madikwe, and Shamwari, all of which offer unparalleled tourism services, including fine...
East Africa at its Exotic Best
Nowhere else sums up the East African dream like the Masai Mara. Always the best place in Kenya to see huge herds of grazers and a seemingly endless procession of carnivores big and small the Masai Mara is the one place in East Africa I could return to again and again and never get jaded or bored....
The Future of African Conservation
The Laikipia plateau has no distinct boundaries, no start or end point, but to generalise it’s the huge chunk of land falling away to the north of Mt Kenya down to the burning semi-desert of northern Kenya proper. On paper this seems a strange area for a safari. There are no big name national...
Classic Africa
What can be said about the Serengeti that hasn’t already been said? This is simply Africa as you always imagined it. Endless rolling bleached grasslands with scattered flat-topped acacia trees and animals everywhere. This is the Tanzania’ mirror image of Kenya’s Masai Mara and it’s...
The Valley of the Leopard
When I first visited South Luangwa in 2014, I immediately knew I would have to come back when we spotted a male leopard lounging in a sausage tree by the river’s edge just minutes after entering the park without another car in sight. This would become an almost daily occurrence over the subsequent...
Accessible and under-rated park watched over by Mt Meru
The small Arusha National Park certainly can’t boast the big game of Tanzania’s flagship parks, but it’s got more going for it than you might think. First, it’s an easy day trip destination just a short drive from the town of Arusha, which also makes it a good bet for Kili climbers who might...
Up-close encounters in luxurious surrounds
Self-drive safaris are fun, but you'll likely never get the sightings that you can experience on a guided drive. Timbavati is dotted with luxurious lodges, each offering wildlife drives, walks and other activities like bush breakfasts. Our trip coincided with an unseasonably rainy weekend and we...
Deservedly popular
Some are critical of Kruger's popularity and network of tarred roads that facilitate self-drive safaris. But the park is so vast that in all but the busiest of times (South African school holidays, specifically), you can still drive for a while and only see a smattering of cars if you choose your...
Unbeatable Wildlife Watching
I may be biased, because I visited Moremi on honeymoon (on an expedition with Bush Ways Safaris), but this reserve is my favourite safari destination. Everything about it screams Africa: the stellar cast of wildlife, from stars such as leopards in trees, to character actors like warthogs and...