The cheapest way in
Nyamepi Camp
ZimParks' own communal campsite on the river, booked and prepaid through Central Reservations rather than at the gate, with sites from $120.
Zimbabwe · UNESCO World Heritage since 1984
Mana Pools National Park Independent Guides & Information
On the floodplain of the Lower Zambezi, Mana Pools is one of the very few national parks in Africa where you may legally walk among big game. Canoe past hippo pods, watch bull elephants rear up for winterthorn pods, and plan around one hard fact: the park is effectively closed from December to March.
Photo: Babakathy (CC0)
The February 2026 ZimParks tariff, read from the gazette itself
The unguided walking rules, in full and without the myth
Every ZimParks site and private camp, with real prices
Nobody listed here has paid to be here
Where Mana Pools National Park is, and how you get in
Mana Pools sits in the extreme north of Zimbabwe, on the south bank of the Zambezi and directly opposite Zambia's Lower Zambezi National Park. The only road in drops off the escarpment through the compulsory Marongora check-in, roughly 300 km from Harare.
- 1 Marongora HQ Compulsory check-in on top of the escarpment, before you descend. The only officially published GPS point on the route
- 2 Karoi Last town for fuel and supplies, 207 km from Harare
- 3 Chinhoyi First major town on the A1, 115 km from Harare
- 4 Chirundu border post The Zambia crossing; the A1 continues here past the Mana turn-off
- 5 Mana Pools floodplain (approximate centre) The park's visited core along the Zambezi; ZimParks gives the park position as roughly 15°45'S 29°20'E
- Pan with a hide or viewing platform
- Dam
- Gate or barrier on the map
- Tarred trunk road
Why this guide exists, and where the numbers come from
This guide is written by someone who overlanded much of Africa in his own Land Cruiser with a rooftop tent, and for whom the national parks were what stayed. The information about them online was usually missing, wrong or years old: fees from three tariff sheets ago, camps that had closed, roads described by people who had never driven them.
So this guide runs on the park authority's own tariff document rather than a copied operator page, on thirty-year climate normals rather than brochure weather, and on what the camps tell us directly. Every claim carries a date. Where ZimParks is silent, so are we, apart from saying that it is silent.
Nothing here is for sale. Listing a camp is free and no position on any page can be bought. Some outbound links earn us a small commission, and that changes neither the order of a list nor a single figure on these pages.
Found something out of date? Tell us and it changes the same week.
Where to stay in Mana Pools National Park
Twenty-one places to stay, from a ZimParks campsite to a fly-in camp reachable only by light aircraft. These four are not the best four; they are the four that mark out the range.
Park-owned, and the best value
Musangu & Muchichiri Lodges
The two big ZimParks lodges are the best-value roofed accommodation in the park, and often sell out close to a year ahead.
Guiding as the main event
Vundu Camp
An old-school camp built around its guiding, whose field knowledge of Mana's wild dogs drew the BBC to film here.
The top end
Wilderness Chikwenya
Reachable only by light aircraft, where the Sapi River meets the Zambezi, from about $1,140 per person a night.
Everything you need to plan a visit
Entry fees
The 2026 ZimParks rates: $24 a day for international visitors, with no day-visitor discount trickery, plus every campsite and lodge tariff.
See the fees →Lodges & camps
From the famous Nyamepi riverside campsites to owner-guided bushcamps and the fly-in camps on the private concessions.
Browse lodges →Getting there
384 km from Harare, the compulsory Marongora check-in, the escarpment descent, and why most safari guests fly in.
Plan the route →Wildlife
The standing elephants of the albida forest, a national wild dog stronghold, and Zimbabwe's largest hippo and crocodile concentrations.
What you'll see →Best time to visit
Why August to October is the peak, why October tops 40°C, and why the park effectively shuts from December to March.
Pick your month →Things to do
Walking safaris under the real permit rules, canoe trails on the Zambezi, tiger fishing, and what is genuinely not allowed.
See activities →Our own research
We priced every park in Africa
We collect the official tariff of every park we cover, convert it, and hold each one to the same standard day. Twenty-nine parks are in the index now, the famous ones included. These three pages come out of that table.
The most expensive safari parks in Africa
Ngorongoro charges $278 for a standard day and $148 of that is the descent into the crater. The ranking straight down, with the line item behind each number.
See the ranking →The most expensive parks for self-drivers
One person, one car, no one to split the vehicle fee or the campsite with. Uganda's foreign-vehicle tariff turns the order upside down.
See the self-drive ranking →Africa's most expensive published safari beds
The highest nightly rates any camp in our network puts in writing, and why the real top of the market names no price at all.
See the rates →Latest updates to this guide
Every change to this guide, dated.
- 2026-09-13 Twenty new pages: what a trip actually costs, the history of the park that defeated a dam, health, camping at Nyamepi and Chitake, flying in, Karoi as the last stop, the wet season, Mana Pools or Lower Zambezi, and a page for every month of the year. See the page
- 2026-09-13 Two comparison guides now point here: Hwange or Mana Pools, and Gonarezhou or Mana Pools, both built from the parks' own data. See the page
- 2026-09-11 Repaired the outbound links to John's Camp, the Bushlife camps and two sources after their sites moved pages. See the page
- 2026-09-08 Added hire-car and flight links to the getting-there page, marked as paid links because they are. See the page
- 2026-09-06 All outbound lodge links on this site are now nofollow, so a listing here is information, not a traded favour.