About this guide
Who's behind Visit Mana Pools?
The only guide you need to read twice: the walking rules here are not a formality.
Who writes this
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 he started writing it down properly. This guide runs on the park authority's own tariff documents, on climate normals rather than brochure weather, and on what the camps tell us directly, with a date on every claim. Where we do not know something, the page says so.
What this site is
An independent guide to Mana Pools with no commercial interest in where you stay. The walking rules here are widely misdescribed, and getting them wrong is not a small mistake.
Where the rules come from
Park fees come from the gazetted ZimParks tariff document itself, published February 2026, not from copied operator pages, and every fees page shows when we last checked it. That matters at Mana more than most places: many sites still claim an accommodated discount that the gazette simply does not give this park.
The walking, driving and river rules come from the official Mana Pools and Chitake Codes of Conduct. A lot goes unpublished at Mana: visitor statistics, wildlife censuses, gate opening hours and most private camp rates. Those gaps are marked. Wildlife likelihoods are calibrated against published traveller sighting data.
Found something outdated? Tell us and we will fix it.
Sister guides
Mana Pools is one of three Zimbabwean parks we cover, with Hwange and Gonarezhou, and part of a wider handful across Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana, Uganda and Kenya.