Insika Lodge
Highlights
- 26 Luxury Rooms facing the gardens and 14 Signature Rooms overlooking the private waterhole or stream
- Six sets of interleading Luxury Rooms for families, with children of all ages welcome
- An 18-metre swimming pool overlooking the private waterhole
- Dinner, bed and breakfast rates, with a three-course chef's à la carte dinner every night
- Zambezi National Park's main gate 400 metres away and the Zambezi River 200 metres away
- Complimentary shuttle to Victoria Falls town and the Falls five times a day, plus free Wi-Fi
- Full spa with three treatment rooms, manicure and pedicure stations and an infra-red sauna
- Firepit, bar and deli, alfresco dining decks and a waterhole viewing platform
Information
- Lodge type: Safari Hotel
- Location: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
- Lodge size: 40 Rooms
- Recommended stay: 2-5 nights
- Malaria risk: Yes — Victoria Falls is a malaria area; prophylaxis is recommended year-round, with the highest risk in the November to April rains
- Getting there: A 20-minute drive from Victoria Falls International Airport (VFA), the nearest gateway, with scheduled flights from Johannesburg and other regional hubs
Experience The Magic Of Insika Lodge: Adventure And Tranquility Await!
Insika Lodge is a 40-room boutique safari hotel just outside Victoria Falls town in Zimbabwe, set 200 metres from the Zambezi River and 400 metres from the main gate of Zambezi National Park. Insika Lodge is laid out through indigenous mopane woodland, with lush gardens, streams, ponds and a private waterhole that draws birdlife and game right up to the lodge. It is one of the most peaceful bases in Victoria Falls. You are minutes from the Falls, the gorge and the river, yet the loudest thing at breakfast is the birdsong.
Insika Lodge takes its name from an isiNdebele word meaning "Pillar of Strength", a tribute to the towering column of spray that rises above Victoria Falls in flood and can be seen from up to 50 kilometres away. That spirit of quiet strength runs through the lodge: elegant rooms dressed in local art and teak, warm and attentive Zimbabwean hospitality, and a front desk that takes care of every activity booking for you.
Insika Lodge suits travellers who want the best of both worlds. You can spend the morning on a Zambezi National Park game drive, the afternoon walking the rainforest path along the Falls, and the evening at the firepit with a cold drink as the sun goes down over the mopane.
Rooms And Suites
Insika Lodge offers 40 rooms in two categories: 26 Luxury Rooms and 14 Signature Rooms, all en-suite and all set among the gardens.
- Luxury Rooms (26): These face the gardens and come with a king bed or two singles, mosquito netting and a bathroom with both a bathtub and a shower. Six sets of interleading Luxury Rooms make Insika Lodge an excellent choice for families travelling together.
- Signature Rooms (14): These overlook either the waterhole or the stream. They add a generous bathtub, a double shower, an indoor lounge area and a large private veranda. The Signature Rooms are the top pick for couples and honeymooners.
Every room at Insika Lodge carries the distinctive artwork of Craig Martin and locally crafted teak furniture. Together they give the lodge its superbly understated African elegance.
Cuisine And Wine
Insika Lodge rates are on a dinner, bed and breakfast basis, with a three-course chef's à la carte dinner each evening and complimentary filter coffee and teas throughout the day. The kitchen at Insika Lodge pairs locally sourced ingredients with international technique. The menu runs from hearty African stews to beautifully plated contemporary dishes, and changes with the seasons.
Breakfast is served in the dining area overlooking the mopane woodland and waterhole. The bar and deli handle lighter meals and handcrafted cocktails through the day, and these are charged separately. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free diets are catered for on request.
Facilities
Insika Lodge is built around a central guest area that opens onto expansive decks, gardens and the private waterhole, so the wildlife comes to you between outings.
- An 18-metre swimming pool with loungers overlooking the waterhole
- Alfresco dining decks and a firepit for evening drinks under the stars
- A bar and deli with live sport on screen
- A viewing platform over the waterhole for game and birdwatching
- Gardens, streams and ponds winding through indigenous mopane woodland, with excellent birding throughout
- Free Wi-Fi and a 24-hour front desk
- A complimentary shuttle to Victoria Falls town and the Falls five times a day
Activities
Insika Lodge puts every major Victoria Falls activity within easy reach, and the front desk books them all through trusted local operators. Activities are charged separately from the room rate.
- The Falls: A guided walk along the rainforest path on the Zimbabwe side, reached via the lodge shuttle
- Zambezi National Park: Game drives through mopane woodland and riverine bush, with elephant, buffalo and superb birdlife; the main gate is just 400 metres from Insika Lodge
- Zambezi River: Sunrise and sunset cruises past hippos and crocodiles on the upper Zambezi
- From the air: Helicopter flights over Victoria Falls and the Batoka Gorge
- Adrenaline: Bungee jumping off the Victoria Falls Bridge, ziplining across the Batoka Gorge and white-water rafting on the Zambezi
- Culture: Guided village tours offering a glimpse into local traditions and daily life
Timing shapes the experience at Victoria Falls. From roughly February to July the Zambezi is in flood and the spray is at its most spectacular. From about August to December the water drops, the rock face and gorge come into view, and rafting runs its full length.
Spa And Wellness
Insika Lodge has a full on-site spa with three treatment rooms, manicure and pedicure stations, an infra-red sauna and a relaxation lounge for unwinding before and after treatments. Local therapists offer massages, body wraps, facials, manicures and pedicures, many inspired by traditional African ingredients. Set among the lodge gardens, the spa is a wonderfully restorative way to end a day of spray, dust and adrenaline.
FAQ
Where is Insika Lodge located?
Insika Lodge is a 40-room boutique safari hotel just outside Victoria Falls town in Zimbabwe's Matabeleland North province. Insika Lodge sits about 200 metres from the Zambezi River and 400 metres from the main entrance of Zambezi National Park, surrounded by mopane woodland, gardens and a private waterhole. Victoria Falls International Airport is a 20-minute drive away, and a complimentary shuttle runs into Victoria Falls town five times a day.
What rooms does Insika Lodge offer?
Insika Lodge has 40 rooms in two categories. The 26 Luxury Rooms face the gardens, offer a king bed or two singles, and include six interleading sets for families. The 14 Signature Rooms overlook the waterhole or stream and add a double shower, bathtub, indoor lounge area and large private veranda. Every room at Insika Lodge features Craig Martin artwork and locally crafted teak furniture.
What is included in the rates at Insika Lodge?
Insika Lodge rates are quoted in US dollars per person per night sharing, on a dinner, bed and breakfast basis. The rates include breakfast, a three-course chef's à la carte dinner, complimentary filter coffee and teas, free Wi-Fi, and transfers to and from Victoria Falls town. Lunch, drinks, flights, activities, activity transfers, travel insurance and the Victoria Falls entrance fee are charged separately.
Is Insika Lodge suitable for families with children?
Insika Lodge welcomes children of all ages and is one of the more family-friendly places to stay in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Six sets of interleading Luxury Rooms let families sleep side by side, and the 18-metre swimming pool keeps children busy between outings. The gardens and waterhole bring birdlife and game close to the rooms. Couples and honeymooners usually prefer the 14 Signature Rooms with their waterhole views.
Is there a malaria risk at Insika Lodge?
Yes. Insika Lodge is in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, which is a malaria area, so anti-malaria prophylaxis is recommended for every stay. The risk peaks during the rainy season from November to April and is lower in the dry winter months, but it is never zero. Guests should consult a travel clinic before departure and use insect repellent and the mosquito nets provided in Insika Lodge rooms.
When is the best time to stay at Insika Lodge?
The best time to stay at Insika Lodge depends on what you want from Victoria Falls. From roughly February to July the Zambezi River is in flood and the spray over the Falls is at its most dramatic. From about August to December the water drops, views into the gorge open up, and white-water rafting runs its full length. Game viewing in nearby Zambezi National Park also improves as animals gather at water.
In Conclusion
Insika Lodge is one of the finest-value boutique stays in Victoria Falls. It combines 40 elegant rooms, a private waterhole, a full spa and dinner, bed and breakfast rates in a quiet woodland setting just 400 metres from Zambezi National Park. Insika Lodge is ideal for travellers who want to see the Falls, raft the gorge or cruise the Zambezi by day, then come back to a peaceful lodge with superb food rather than a busy town hotel. Families gain interleading rooms and an 18-metre pool, and couples gain Signature Rooms with private verandas over the waterhole.
The best time to book Insika Lodge is February to July for the Falls in full, thundering flood, or August to December for rafting, clearer gorge views and better game viewing. Two to three nights covers the Falls and the headline activities; four or five nights leaves room for a day trip into Zambezi National Park or across to Chobe in Botswana.
Uyaphi.com has been planning tailor-made African safaris from Cape Town since 1999, and 27 years in the business means we know exactly where Insika Lodge fits in a Zimbabwe itinerary. It works well as the opening stop before the elephants of Hwange, as the finale after a Botswana safari, or as the anchor of a Victoria Falls honeymoon. Insika Lodge rates form part of a full safari itinerary. We arrange the flights, transfers and activities around your stay, with no booking fees, no credit card surcharges and 24-hour emergency support while you travel. Contact us to start planning your Victoria Falls stay at Insika Lodge.
Rates from US$ 230.00 Per person per night
Insika Lodge Rates
Per person per night sharing
Rates are in US Dollar
*Rates may vary according to season
- Dinner, bed and breakfast
- Dinners are a 3 course Chef's à la carte
- Complimentary filter coffees and teas
- Free Wi-Fi
- Complimentary transfers to and from Victoria Falls town
- All other meals and drinks
- All flights
- All optional or activity based transfers
- Travel insurance
- Items of a personal nature
- All activities and safari options
- Victoria Falls entrance fee
Book This Zimbabwe Lodge Now
Zimbabwe Travel Topics
The Perfect Zimbabwe Honeymoon
Most honeymoons are an exercise in doing very little at considerable expense, and there is a great deal to be said for that. Zimbabwe simply arranges better company for it. Elephants come down to drink below the deck while you are still on your first coffee; the guide turns out to know which lion crossed the airstrip in the night; dinner happens on a Zambezi deck while the light goes orange and then goes altogether. Nobody puts Zimbabwe at the top of the shortlist — Kenya and the Cape get there first — which is precisely why the lodges are quieter and the guiding is better than it needs to be.
Top 10 Must See Attractions In Victoria Falls
Livingstone named it after a queen who never saw it, and the Tonga had been calling it Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders, for a very long time before he turned up. Theirs is the better name. Five hundred million litres a minute go over the edge in full flood, which is enough to soak you through a hired raincoat before you are halfway along the Zimbabwe footpath, and enough to hide the falls entirely if you have come in the wrong month. There is also a rock pool at the very lip of the drop that people swim in. We will come to that.
5 Best Lodges In Victoria Falls
You can see the falls properly in ninety minutes. The rest of the week happens wherever you are sleeping, which makes the choice of lodge matter more here than almost anywhere else in Zimbabwe. Some of them are town hotels with a shuttle and a buffet. Others sit far enough upriver that the loudest thing at breakfast is one hippo disagreeing with another. The gap in price between those two experiences is usually smaller than you would expect, and the gap in the holiday is not. Here are five I would put my own money on.
10 Reasons To Visit The Zambezi River
The Zambezi begins as a spring in a patch of Zambian woodland you could step across, and ends two and a half thousand kilometres later in the Indian Ocean, having spent much of the journey acting as the border of half of southern Africa. Six countries. One waterfall that needs no introduction, a dam that made an inland sea, and a stretch below that dam at Mana Pools where you are permitted to walk. It is also, at six in the evening with the light going, the single best place in this part of the continent to be sitting still.
Luxury Tented Safari Camps in Zimbabwe
"Tent" is a word working extremely hard in this part of the brochure. It covers canvas on a hardwood deck with a four-poster and plumbing that would pass in Kensington, and it also covers a bucket shower and a zip. What the two share is the actual reason to choose either: canvas does not keep sound out. You hear the elephants arrive at the Hwange waterhole at two in the morning. You hear the hippos settling their differences on the Zambezi. You lie there listening rather than sleeping, which is rather the point of the whole arrangement.
10 Reasons To Visit The Hwange National Park
Hwange should not really work. Most of it sits on Kalahari sand with no permanent river anywhere near it, and the reason elephants stand shoulder to shoulder at Nyamandhlovu Pan in October is that somebody is running a diesel pump. That decision was taken in the 1920s by a warden named Ted Davison, and it has been kept up, more or less, ever since. Fourteen thousand square kilometres of managed thirst. The Big Five are all present on paper, though I would not build a holiday around seeing the rhino. The elephants are an entirely different proposition.
Zimbabwe Travel Bucket List
For most of the last century the Rhodesian authorities preferred to believe that Zimbabweans had not built Great Zimbabwe. Phoenicians were proposed. So were the Queen of Sheba's architects. The stonework is Shona, laid without mortar, eleven metres high in places, and it is the only ruin I can think of that gave its name to the country containing it. That is the sort of country this is. The obvious things — the falls, the Hwange elephants, the rapids below the gorge — are worth every hour of the flight, and underneath them sits a second Zimbabwe that most itineraries never touch.
10 Reasons to Visit Victoria Falls for an Unforgettable Experience
The bridge was cast in Darlington, shipped out in pieces and bolted together over the gorge in 1905, and people now jump off it on an elastic rope. Victoria Falls has been like this ever since: a serious piece of natural history with an adrenaline economy bolted to the side of it. You can run the grade five rapids in the Batoka Gorge in the morning and be on a boat with a gin and tonic by six, watching the same water arrive flat and innocent above the lip. Both are honest ways to spend a day here. So is doing neither.