There is surely no African safari enthusiast alive who doesn’t have an image of a mighty elephant straining on the tips of its toenails to reach into the towering trees of the legendary cathedral forests of Mana Pools National Park. Filtered light shafts illuminate the forest floor, where – just imagine! – you might actually see a pangolin.
Seriously. Covering several hundred square kilometres adjacent to the river all the way to the Zambezi Escarpment, Mana (meaning ‘four’) Pools is an area of breathtaking and savage natural beauty. Unsurprisingly, it’s a World Heritage Site, renowned for its proliferation of predators, game and birds, all in astonishing numbers and some in rarity. Driving and boating afford one exceptional sighting after the next – from stalking lions and slinking leopards, to snorkeling elephants cruising across to Zambia, and (in summer) those seasonal flying jewels, the southern carmine bee-eaters, seen in dazzling colonies along the banks of this heart-racing river. Mana Pools is an African safari tour you’ll never forget.
