Zinave National Park
Expert Reviews (2)
Mozambique Parks
Ariadne is a renowned African wildlife photographer whose work is featured in many well-known guidebooks and magazines.
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A New Beginning in Zinave National Park
Zinave National Park is an exciting emerging Big Five destination, about 7 hours’ drive inland from Vilanculos. The relative proximity to one of Mozambique’s main tourist hot spots should help put this off-the-beaten-track gem on the map.
Since the involvement of the Peace Parks Foundation from 2015, Zinave has been given a new start. Thousands of animals have been relocated here in recent years and predators are slowly coming back on their own accord.
The only accommodation in the park is Tondo, a basic tented camp with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities on the bank of the Save River. As several researchers and park employees live in the camp, evenings were sociable affairs.
For now, most of the reintroduced animals are kept in a core 186km2 sanctuary. Over several games drives we saw plenty of wildlife including giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, waterbuck, eland, nyala and impala. We also came across a few buffalo bulls staring at us from the thickets and we felt we had hit the jackpot when we saw a rhino mother and calf running across the road.
Some of the wildlife is still a bit skittish, but overall Zinave exceeded all our expectations. And this is just the beginning… I can’t wait to revisit this place in a few years’ time.
Philip is an acclaimed travel writer and author of many guidebooks, including the Bradt guides to Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.
An Exciting Off-the-Beaten-Track Gem
Zinave is a national park with a troubled past but great prospects for an exciting future. Situated half-a-day’s drive inland of the popular beach resort Vilanculos, it protects a large tract of pristine bush bounded by the Save River to the north and dotted with shallow pans including fever-tree-lined Lake Zinave. It also forms an important component of the 100,000km2 Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which extends into Zimbabwe and South Africa, and includes the world-famous Kruger National Park.
Originally gazetted as a national park in 1973, Zinave suffered from intensive poaching during the 15-year civil war that started in 1977. By the mid 1990s, very little wildlife was left; a survey undertaken in 2010 indicated that the likes of lion, cheetah, elephant, rhino, buffalo, giraffe, roan antelope and sable antelope had by then become locally extinct or were very close to it.
The turning point for Zinave came in 2015, when a co-management agreement was signed with the Peace Parks Foundation, an NGO dedicated to reviving the more neglected corners of Africa’s transfrontier conservation areas. Working closely with local communities to curb poaching, Peace Parks initiated a rewilding program that included the reintroduction of elephant, buffalo, rhino, giraffe and various other grazers. Lions and leopards have also found their way back, meaning that Zinave is now a genuine Big Five safari destination.
We spent three days exploring Zinave, basing ourselves at the simple but very affordable Tondo Camp, which comprises a few standing tents, a campsite and a communal self-catering kitchen overlooking the Save River. We regularly saw hippos and crocodiles from camp, and enjoyed several rewarding game drives within the fenced 186km2 core sanctuary that currently supports most of the park’s wildlife. Here, we regularly encountered zebra, wildebeest, nyala, greater kudu and warthog, while one-off sightings included giraffe, buffalo, eland and white rhino. Judging by the amount of fresh dung and tree damage we encountered, we were unlucky to miss out on elephant. However, we were told that sightings of carnivores such as lion, leopard and spotted hyena are still very rare. The birdlife was generally impressive; highlights included marabou stork, lilac-breasted roller, crested guineafowl, trumpeter hornbill, purple-crested turaco and African hawk-eagle.
Overall I would say that Zinave remains a second-string park, one best suited to budget-conscious self-drivers with a high-clearance 4x4 and an adventurous frame of mind. But as more wildlife is reintroduced and the core fenced area is further expanded, little-known Zinave has the potential to become Mozambique’s top safari destination.