Reviews of Chikwenya Camp

"The beauty of Chikwenya Camp wasn’t immediately evident as we drove through dry brush up to camp. We received a musical welcome by the camp staff as we drove up and once out of the vehicle we could see how pretty Chikwenya is. It sits along the Zambezi River with the Zambezi escarpment rising beyond the river in Zambia.

The focal point of camp is the large shaded area at the center of camp. Chairs suspended from the trees are a comfortable place to pass the warm afternoons. Camp is very spread out with a large indoor dining and lounge area and another lounge and bar area closer to the pool, which sits nearest the river. Tents are located on either side of the central camp area and are built on elevated platforms. Our room was very spacious and decorated in light colors. It had an outside seating area with a view of the river and mountains beyond. There were charging points at a central location in our tent and WiFi was available throughout camp, not just in our tent.

The weather was very hot when we visited just past mid-October. We appreciated the ceiling and floor fan in our room. We enjoyed breakfast and lunch under the shade of the large trees at the center of camp. Breakfast included a buffet of cold options like cereal, yogurt, fruit, muffins and hot options that included eggs, warm bread, bacon etc. Lunch was served to our table and included salads and a meat dish plus fruit for dessert. Three-course dinner was served at our table, under the stars.

In spite of the heat and very dry conditions, animal sightings were very good. Most grass was grazed to the ground and all the trees trimmed to the level of the tallest browsers. Some elephants and impala looked stressed from the conditions, but the eland were numerous and looked to be in good condition. We were fortunate to see nyala for the first time and we were surprised by how numerous the eland were. We enjoyed an informative walking safari with our guide Lovemore during which we saw two male eland sparring; it was quite exciting. One morning at breakfast we saw a small pack of painted wolves (wild dogs) loping across the dry Sapi riverbed as we ate. Another highlight was boating on the Zambezi River and taking pictures of the landscape and animals along the bank. Sundowner on the water is impossibly pretty. I didn’t fish because the water level was low and the water was very cloudy.

There were tsetse flies in the wooded areas around camp, but none in camp and none on the water or on our walking safari. We didn’t notice mosquitoes." See all these reviews: 12n in Zambia; 10n in Botswana; 6n in Zimbabwe

"Chikwenya is a beautiful, relatively new, camp located on the eastern side of the Mana Pools National Park on the banks of the Zambezi. It has 9 tents each with a private outlook over the Zambezi. Our tent was extremely comfortable and well equipped. The tents are accessed by an elevated wooden walkway and ours was the furthest from the main camp (about a 5 minute walk).

The main area comprises a large lounge/dining tent, a bar tent and a good sized pool arranged around a camp fire area shaded by large trees overlooking the river. The food and service was top notch with the food being probably the best of the four camps that we visited on this trip.

When we arrived the camp was full as we joined a family party of twelve from the US. When they left we had the whole camp to ourselves which was great in some ways but not in others.

The area is stunningly beautiful, we particularly liked the riverside forest to the east of the camp especially when the sun was low in the sky and filtered through the trees, a place where a landscape photographer could spend a lot of time. The camp offers a good range of activities: game drives, canoeing and boat trips on the Zambezi and guided walking. The water based activities were very enjoyable and provided a nice change from the two game drives a day from our previous camps.

The variety of activities does mean that there are fewer vehicles out on game drives at any given time. This is compounded by being the only camp in the area meaning that there may not be many pairs of human eyes in the bush. In three days we had one predator sighting, a pair of mating Lions, but many sightings of Elephants, Hippo, Zebra, Eland and other antelopes. The highlight was probably Elephants reaching up into the trees for food. The range of birds was very good." See all these reviews: 10n in Zimbabwe; 4n in Botswana