Game Trail Camping Safari
Safari Information
- Departure; Scheduled and tailor-made departure dates
- Duration; 16 Days / 15 Nights
- Lodging; Bush Camping
- Group Size; Minimum 2
- Note: Travel insurance is compulsory for all safaris
Spectacular Game Viewing in South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe: 16-Day Safari
Embark on the ultimate African safari adventure! Witness an abundance of wildlife in some of the most spectacular game viewing areas in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
This 16-day Zimbabwe safari will take you through some of the most beautiful landscapes on the continent, including the awe-inspiring Victoria Falls and Hwange National Park. Spend time exploring Chobe National Park and the Okavango Delta by dug-out canoe and cruise with elephant herds in Botswana's premier game reserve.
Days 1-2: Kruger National Park
- Departing Johannesburg, we head for the world-famous Kruger National Park at 06:30 am a bright and early start.
- The region we visit in the Kruger National Park is the remote Pufuri area, rich in wildlife and scenery.
- Morning and afternoon game drives with the opportunity to spot and photograph Africa's wildlife, including Leopard, Lion, Elephants, and Buffalo, just to mention but a few.
- Overnight: Camping Bx1 Lx2 Dx2 - fantastic facilities including hot showers, a pool, and a restaurant with a shop.
Day 3: Great Zimbabwe Monument
- At Beit Bridge, we enter Zimbabwe on our way to the world-famous Great Zimbabwe heritage site near Masvingo.
- The Great Zimbabwe Ruins await, offering you a glimpse into some of the oldest structures in Southern Africa, dating back to the 11th to 14th Centuries.
- On foot, we get the chance to explore these ancient structures on a guided tour, have your camera ready for some spectacular photographic opportunities.
- Overnight: Camping BLD.
Day 4-5: Matobo National Park
- Moving onto Bulawayo, we arrive in the late afternoon and set up our camp on the outskirts of the park, before enjoying a sundowner and an evening around the campfire.
- The following morning we head into the Matobo National Park with a local guide to visit the core of the Matopos Hills, an area of granite koppies and wooded valleys.
- On our open vehicle game drive, we visit World's View and the historical site of Cecil John Rhodes' grave and discover the unusual rock formations characteristic of this area.
- As part of our visit, we take a guided walk to track and hopefully find endangered white rhinos and other wildlife and view bushman rock paintings.
- Overnight: Camping BLD.
Days 6-7: Hwange National Park
- Named after a local Nhanzwa chief, Hwange National Park is the largest Park in Zimbabwe, occupying roughly 14 650 square kilometres and is located in the northwest corner of the country.
- It is famed for its large elephant population.
- Our camp is in the game management area that borders the park, and we explore the park with our local guide on a full day game drive in an open 4WD game viewing vehicle.
- Overnight: Camping BLD.
Days 8-9: Victoria Falls
- We camp for 2 nights in the town of Victoria Falls. We enjoy a spectacular walk through tropical vegetation to the very edge of the “Mosi oa Tunya” or “the smoke that thunders” - Victoria Falls.
- There are opportunities to white water raft on the mighty Zambezi River, bungi jump or take a “flight of angels” (own expense).
- Overnight: Camping B.
Day 10: Chobe National Park
- Heading East we enter Botswana and set up camp on the banks of the Chobe River.
- A definite highlight here is the afternoon game viewing "sundowner" cruise on the Chobe River whilst watching the largest herds of elephants in Africa playing in the waters.
- Overnight: Camping BL.
Day 11: Gweta
- This morning there is time for an optional (own expense) game drive in the Chobe National Park.
- Heading south through the Kasane Forest Reserve, we make our way to Gweta for our overnight stop.
- Here we sleep in our tents nestled at the base of ancient baobab trees.
- Overnight: Camping BL.
Days 12-14: Okavango Delta
- By 4X4 vehicle, we are transferred into the Okavango Delta itself where we meet up with our local guides.
- We board Mokoro (dugout canoes) and get transported deeper into the Okavango through channels and waterways.
- We set up camp on a wild and remote island where we start exploring the Delta's amazing wildlife and birdlife on foot.
- There is also get the chance to swim in the crystal clear waters and learn from our guides about their culture and ways of life.
- Returning to Maun on the afternoon of the 14th Day.
- Overnight: Camping BLD.
Day 15: Khama Rhino Sanctuary
- Departing Maun, we make our way to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary in the west of Botswana.
- The community-based Khama Rhino Sanctuary was set up to save and protect the endangered Rhino population.
- A fantastic opportunity to get up close and personal with these magnificent animals as well as learn about the fight we face to keep them alive.
- Overnight: Camping BLD.
Day 16: Zimbabwe Game Trail Camping Safari Ends
- Entering South Africa again on the last day's drive, we head towards Johannesburg where our safari together, unfortunately, comes to an end.
- Distance/time: 630km, ± 7 hours.
Departs and ends in Johannesburg while visiting South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe - don't miss out on this amazing safari experience; enquire and book now!
This Safari is Tailor-made Rates On request
The Above Rates should be used as a guideline only.
- All rates are subject to availability
- Rates may vary according to season
- Lodging may change depending on your budget
- Vehicle type may change depending on your budget
- All rates may change without notice
- Single supplement may apply
- 15 nights camping
- Entrance fees
- Use of camping equipment (except sleeping bags & pillow)
- Transport in 4WD / safari truck & minibus
- Meals as per itinerary
- Professional guide
- Okavango Delta excursion
- Local Flights
- International flights
- Visas
- Items of a personal nature
- Meals not specified
- Insurance
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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.