Dream of a safari? Go! Every park is different, but UNESCO-listed Mana Pools in Zimbawe has many of The Big Five. The park is close to the Zambezi river on the border to Zambia and not that visited. But you might have to charger your own plane…
Mana Pools feels like wilderness at first glance. In many ways it is. But look longer, and it becomes something more complex: nature as the headline, and culture as the deeper story.
Mana Pools is usually described in simple terms: one of Africa’s great safari destinations, remote, wild, and shaped by the Zambezi River. And it is all of those things.
But what makes it more interesting—at least from a cultural traveller’s perspective—is what sits underneath the wildlife experience. This is not just a landscape of animals, but a cultural environment shaped by centuries of human movement, survival, and adaptation along one of southern Africa’s great river systems.
This is also one of Africa’s most important UNESCO World Heritage Sites, not only for its dramatic Zambezi floodplains, but for its extraordinary biodiversity. Mana Pools National Park is home to huge populations of elephants, hippos, crocodiles, and predators like lions, leopards, and wild dogs, all moving through a landscape shaped by seasonal water and ancient river systems.
I didn’t come here to study history, but because safari is one of the few things my son will travel for. But Mana Pools has a way of reminding you that “wilderness” is never empty of people or stories.
In 2013, when my son was 8 years old, we visited some friends that were living in Harare, Zimbabwe. There are not lot of tourists in Zimbabwe – the country use to be a big tourist destination, but the political climate is very unstable now. The downside when you are a tourist (the citizens of course have it worse) is that the infrastructure is not good. The plus side is that you are almost alone in the camps. Be aware that a lot of Safari Camps don’t want children.
HOW TO GET TO MANA POOLS
The best safari parks is always in the middle of the nowhere.
The bad infrastructure meant we had to rent a small plane (!) with an old English pilot to fly us out. Our plane dropped us off on a small landing strip. We told him he could just leave us – someone would come an pick us up. I am so glad he didn’t. Apparently a Belgian tourist was left the year before and was eaten by a lion!!! And it turned out that the internet (which is not functioning well there) didn’t deliver our message of arrival time. So our pilot had to call several people, and we had to stop a passing car from another safari camp before we were picked up.
Thank you pilot!
The park is up north by the Zambezi river close to Zambia.
We stayed in Kanga camp right beside a watering hole. There were max 8 other guests at any point. This is how a safari camp should be! The camp is build around a waterhole, so you don’t even have to go out in a jeep! But you do…
THE ANIMALS IN MANA POOLS
Mana Pools is first and foremost about the animals. This is a place where wildlife still feels genuinely wild—elephants moving through the riverine forest, often standing on their hind legs to reach branches, lions resting in the shade during the heat of the day, and hippos holding their territory in the deep pools of the Zambezi.
What makes it different from many other safari destinations is how close everything feels to the natural rhythms of the river. There are no fences in the same way you find elsewhere, and animals move freely through a landscape that feels both open and unpredictable. You’re not watching nature from a distance here—you’re inside it.
Animals
The park is far from one-dimensional. Wild dogs, when you’re lucky enough to see them, bring a completely different energy—fast, coordinated, and unpredictable. Then there are the hippos in the Zambezi channels, always half-visible, always alert, anchoring the river with their presence.
Smaller moments matter just as much: antelope moving carefully through open spaces, crocodiles barely breaking the surface of the water, and birdlife constantly shifting between forest and river. Everything feels connected to the rhythm of the Zambezi.
What stands out is not just the diversity of species, but how naturally they exist in the same space. There’s no sense of separation between “viewing” and “being in” the environment—you are inside it, and the animals clearly are too.
And while wildlife is the main draw, it all sits within a larger landscape shaped by the river and a long history of movement along this corridor. But in the moment, it’s the animals that dominate everything—quietly, constantly, and often at very close range.
One of the big 5 is of course the elephant. They walked right beside our tent, when they had to go to and from the waterhole. It was my first safari, but it was obvious that this is a great safari area with plenty of animals. Both the elephants and the baboons were always present at the waterhole.
I did know the Kudu before hand, but it is so much more beautiful in real life. We later ate some and it was quite good.
We had a private jeep and chauffeur/guide to take us out on rides. It was more expensive, but well worth it. We could focus on the animals we wanted to see, nobody complained when I wanted to hear more about the insects and with a child, we could go out and back to the camp, when ever we wanted to.
We went in November – just at the end of the dry season, so all the plants had very little foliage and there were not so many waterholes – meaning it was easy to see and find the the animals. If you wanna go bird watching you should go in the rainy season.
The road between our tent and the dining area was a small trail also used by the animals – especially the baboons and the elephants. At night an armed guard escorted us.
The buffalo is also part of the big 5. This one is now host to a large number of small strange animals living off it’s horns. It’s the circle of life…
Another of the big 5 is the leopard. I know this is a bad picture, but it was the only leopard we saw. It came while we were eating dinner in the camp in front of the waterhole.
Remember good camera equipment and a steady hand!
Landscape
But the landscape matters just as much. The Zambezi shapes everything: the floodplains, the forests, the seasonal cycles, and the way both animals and people have moved through this region for thousands of years. The heat, the dust, the shifting light—it all becomes part of the experience.
Geographically, the Zambezi Valley is part of a major ecological corridor stretching across southern Africa. The river system supports one of the highest densities of large mammals in the region during the dry season, when animals concentrate around remaining water sources.
And while wildlife is what you come for, there is also a deeper context. This is part of a long human story along the Zambezi corridor, where rivers acted as routes for movement, survival, and exchange long before modern borders existed.
Historically, the wider valley has also been a route of human movement and settlement for centuries, shaped by access to water, fishing, and trade along the river. While Mana Pools itself is now strictly protected, the river remains the defining force behind everything in the landscape.
Mana Pools stands out for me not because it was the most comfortable safari, but because it felt the most remote. At times it felt like we had the entire landscape to ourselves—just the river, the heat, and the constant presence of wildlife moving through it.
It was also one of the hottest safari experiences I’ve had, which added a very real edge to everything we did. Nothing here feels staged or controlled. You are simply part of the environment, whether you want to be or not.
That combination—remoteness, intensity, and the sense of being genuinely small in a vast landscape—is what makes Mana Pools unforgettable.
I can also recommmend Walking Safari in Hwange National Park.
Would I go back? Absolutely. But I’d go better prepared for the heat—and still expect it to feel just as raw the second time around.
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