Selous Game Reserve

One would think I enjoy a nature park with animals and on paper the vast area is extremely impressive. However, there are so many problems with the park.

For one it's now called Nyerere after the Tanzanian hero rather the British big game hunter Selous (Seluuu) although everyone still calls it Selous around here. I also saw a map in the management office that splits up the park so technically Selous Game Hunting area (yes, HUNTING!) is south of the river to the edge of the park. The west side is Nyerere NP whereas the park area you will visit is an extra territory all together.

Basically the tourist area is really small. From one gate to another is 70km or so and the circuits around the sides aren't too big. Some are even private due to lodges and villages. You can still easily spend a day driving around.

It's easy to get to Selous actually despite what other reviews say. It's NOT an easy drive from Dar Es Salaam although I did it in 4h rather than the 6½h going the long way on paved road. However, don't do a self drive. Actually don't do a self drive in Tanzania in general. It's not worth it. You can hire a guide with professional safari jeep for decent prices and you get so much more out of it. My Prado even had issues getting around the tall grass where the lions hang out and this was dry …

Continuing our southern roundtrip in the south, our guide took us from Kilwa Masoko to Kibiti (about 180 km) on the B2 road before turning west. On the map it looks like turning west at Ikwirir would be better, but apparently a bridge was out of order. From Kibiti it’s dirt road for 70-80 km, and it's a lot of heavy traffic due to the construction of the giant hydroelectric power plant.

It took roughly 5 hours to the Mpingo Lodge a few km outside the Nyerere National Park, which is the part of Selous Game Reserve you can visit without a hunting license. The lodge is run by two local tough girls which really make your stay special and the place has a wonderful overview og the Rufiji river. As at our prior lodge we were the only guests which suited us just perfect.

Still early afternoon, we managed to arrange a visit to the nearest local village, Mloka. While enjoying the local life we couldn’t help noticing that this village recently has been drastically changed. Heavy trucks were parked everywhere, either to be fixed or the drivers simply having a break. The enormous “clouds of dust” these vehicles make is devastating to the plants, animal life and the local villages.

Early morning next day we started with a river safari upstream on the Rufiji river. Since this wasn't our first ever river cruise we had expectations and they werer fulfilled. WE really appreciate this kind …

Though Selous has been visited by much fewer WHS enthusiasts than the other Tanzanian natural entries on the WH List, the park is by no means difficult to visit. Selous is located on a tourist trail, it is visited by many and there is no problem finding a safari there from Dar es Salaam or Zanzibar. Most of the visitors come there with small light aircraft from Zanzibar. You can get there from Dar by plane, but many tourists come also by land. The route takes about 5 hours and is terrible in places - I definitely do not recommend it without a decent 4x4. The accommodation base at the park itself is quite large, although due to the crisis caused by the pandemic, some places have been closed - temporarily or even permanently. I stayed at the African Safari Lodge, which I can recommend for its good cuisine.

At the beginning I would like to add that although the entry on the UNESCO list is still called Selous Game Reserve, the national park is not called that anymore. As part of the decolonization of names, at the request of president Magufuli, it was renamed into Nyerere National Park. This is how almost everything in Tanzania is named after the country's first president.

Selous is the largest national park in Tanzania, occupying 55 thousand square kilometers, which is about the same as the entire territory of Croatia. However, tourist traffic is concentrated mainly in its north-eastern part. …

We visited the Selous Game Reserve last February. There were heavy rainfalls the week before our visit so we have been stuck with our landrovers regularly, even worse we got stuck in the mud with our small airplane as well when we went from Mtemere airstrip to Zanzibar. Luckily we travelled in a group of 3 landrovers, so there was always someone to help.

Selous Game Reserve is huge. Being a tourist you can only see a small part of it, another big part is reserved for hunting. We stayed at a bush camp at Lake Mwanze. From there we did a walking safari with a ranger on which we encountered girafes, elephants, monkeys and hippos. Really impressing, especially when you are on foot. Although it was early in the morning the temparatures were already quite high, about 30 degrees at 8 o'clock already. By the way: the hippos also visited our bush camp at night when they came out of the water for grazing, they just walked over the campsite and went their own way.

Our second place to stay was the Selous Mbega Camp on the banks of the Rufiji River where it is possible to do a boat safari to see hippos again, crocs and lots of birds.

Selous Game Reserve is a great place to see with lots and lots of game and beautiful diverse landscapes and not many tourists at all. If you ever get the chance to visit it, do so, it's really worth …