tanzania: the rufiji river and pemba’s reefs

Three different ways of seeing the same country, which is why one camp for five nights holds up here.

Mornings often start on the water, with a boat sliding out at first light along the channels and lagoons of Lake Nzerakera for hippo pods and basking crocodiles.

Walks go out on foot with a camp guide and a national park scout and turn on tracks, plants and birdlife rather than distance; they run from the start of June to mid January and take nobody under twelve.

Afternoon drives work the woodland around the two lakes for lion, elephant, giraffe and buffalo. Five nights is roughly what it takes to do all three properly, at different states of light, instead of sampling each one once.

Better than in most of Africa, and still not something anyone can promise.

This park is a key stronghold for African wild dog, and the camp on Lake Nzerakera stands on a stretch that holds a significant population.

What works against you is the animal itself: packs cover enormous ground in a day and can simply be elsewhere for a week. Five nights in one place is genuinely in your favour, since it gives you five mornings rather than one, and the guides there follow where the packs have been.

The dry months tilt it further, because packs den then and stay near one place to raise pups. No sighting figure exists that we would stand behind, so we quote none.

Two flights and a boat, and it takes most of a day.

Siwandu airstrip is half an hour by road from camp, the light aircraft run from there to Dar es Salaam or Zanzibar, and a daily service carries on to Chake Chake on Pemba.

The last stretch belongs to the lodge, which no road reaches: a vehicle to the ferry port at Mkoani, roughly thirty-five to forty minutes, then its own boat across, ten to twenty minutes depending on the state of the tide.

The hard edge in all of it is the lodge's own rule that it cannot take an arrival after five in the afternoon. Where the timetables make that tight, we put a night on Zanzibar into the plan rather than gamble on one connection.

Pemba is a diving island and the lodge is built around that.

Its own centre, Dive 710, is a five-star PADI operation, so a complete beginner can learn there and a qualified diver will find what they need. The reefs fall away into steep coral walls and drift dives, with the Misali Island marine conservation area a short boat ride off, and the sea sits around twenty-seven to twenty-eight degrees.

A non-diver is not stranded for five days. The same reefs snorkel well, and there is a long jetty bar, a pool above the sea, a spa and forest paths behind the lodge where vervet monkeys move through the canopy and bush babies call after dark.

Tell us who holds which certificate and we will shape the days around it.

June to October, when the two halves line up.

Those are the months we rate highest on the Rufiji, with low water drawing animals to the lakes and banks, and the cool, settled stretch on Pemba, where visibility peaks in September and October and we put the island's walls at their finest in August and September.

February is the other option, the standout of the hot months on the coast, with the park green and quiet and its birding strongest, the trade being game spread more widely.

March, April and May are out: rough seas, poor visibility under water, and the camp on the Rufiji shut from mid March until the end of May.

June needs one check, because the lodge on Pemba publishes no season and the dates given for it elsewhere run from April into June.

A good deal of it:

• Five nights in each place is a generous split and either half can lend a night to the other
• The Rufiji can be swapped for Ruaha if you would rather have big cats and kudu than water
• Stone Town fits neatly on the way through to Pemba

The fixed points are worth knowing early. The camp on the Rufiji runs from June to the middle of March and is shut from then until the end of May, and its walking safaris go out only between June and mid January, with nobody under twelve on them.

Fundu Lagoon is reached only by boat, takes no arrival after five in the afternoon and is not suitable for children under twelve. It also closes for part of the year but publishes no dates, so we confirm them with the lodge before we hold anything.