Mana Pools National Park
The park offers unique guided and self-guided walks amongst many wild animals, excellent canoeing and river fishing.
It’s an area of outstanding natural beauty and phenomenal wildlife. Here the Zambezi River, flowing slowly eastwards for thousands of years, has left behind the remains of old river channels forming small seasonal ponds and pools spread over an area of several hundred square kilometres. These extend several kilometres back from the river where on fertile terraces huge mahogany and acacia trees cast luxuriant shade.
Today Mana pools, one of Zimbabwe‘s four World Heritage Sites, is the stage for one of Africa’s greatest natural spectacles – a classic theatre of the wild, attracting hordes of animals during the long, hot African summer, drawn by the abundance of water and the lush grazing along its banks.
Lots of zebras, kudu, eland, impala, and other antelope species flourish among which the lion and the leopard, the hyena and wild dogs find easy pickings.
The sanctuary, one of the only two pockets of nyala in the country, is also home to over 16 000 buffalos and more than 12 000 elephant –one of Zimbabwe’s largest concentration. Many female elephants in the region do not have tusks and are much more aggressive than those with tusks.
Along the river bank where one of the greatest varieties of bird life in the world flourishes, hippos warm themselves in the morning sun. Later in the day, they keep cool by remaining all but submerged in the river, sharing their hidden sandbanks with silent and almost unseen crocodiles.
More than 350 bird species are enough to draw the breath of any ornithologist. Its banks flutter with Goliath herons, Egyptian and Spurwing geese, cormorants, storks, brilliantly coloured bee-eaters, and kingfishers.
Vultures, plovers, Nyasa lovebird, yellow-spotted nicator, white-collared pratincole, Livingstone’s flycatcher, banded snake-eagle, and the cliché symbol of Africa, the black and white fish eagle, haunt the riverine forest and mopane woods.
In the river, Tigerfish, Bream, Tilapia, Vundu, Nkupi, Chessa, Electric fish, Eel fish, Cornish jack and Lungfish sport and prey upon one another.
The richness of the forest trees and plants is the vital link in Mana Pools chain of continuity. The apple ring acacia keeps the elephant herds alive during the fierce October-November dry season. These handsome trees paint a uniquely picturesque landscape which this park is famous for.
Mana Pools national park offers a unique unguided walk in the wilderness, it allows experiencing nature at its best. A guided/unguided canoe is one major attraction along Zambezi River.
