Six guests, three canvas tents, and a camp that comes down at the end of the season. Sango Expedition Camp stands above the seasonal Mzaise River in Zimbabwe’s Savé Valley, and runs from April to October before the canvas is packed away for the year. Lamplight after dark, hot water by the bucket, and in the dry months a sand riverbed the elephants use as a road.
Guides track black and white rhino here on foot.
The conservancy runs to 60,000 hectares, north of Gonarezhou National Park and within the wider Savé Valley Conservancy. As private land it allows what the parks cannot, so drives go off-road and on into the dark. Guides track black and white rhino here on foot. A day bends around what the trackers find, and from June to October the game draws tight on the shrinking waterholes and the dry riverbed.
A century of cattle ranching had stripped the soils and bankrupted the Devuli Cattle Company by the time Wilfried Pabst bought this land. He founded the conservancy the following year, and three decades on the family still owns and runs it, with Andreas Pabst on the management board alongside Donald Jansen. The rhino breeding programme built here has since restocked other reserves with black rhino.
He founded the conservancy the following year
Animals have left Sango for Mozambique, translocated with the Peace Parks Foundation to rewild Zinave National Park. A hundred elephants went 700 kilometres north instead of being culled. They were moved to the Rifa Safari Area in northern Zimbabwe in 2018, with Hemmersbach Rhino Force.
Sango Expedition Camp stands inside the Dadiso Conservation Area, 200 square kilometres set aside in 2021 as a no-hunting zone given over to photographic safaris. Across the wider conservancy, wildlife management is confined to June, July and August, which leaves the rest of the year to guests with cameras. The ground is quiet, and the guides know the animals on it as individuals: the Chapungu lion pride, the leopards and cheetah, the buffalo and elephant, and the wild dogs that use the reserve as a refuge.
Kim Wolhuter, the wildlife filmmaker, has spent years with the resident spotted hyena clans here, never feeding them and never carrying a weapon. Other mornings go to tracking rhino or elephant with the reserve’s trackers, or out on patrol with the anti-poaching unit and its dogs. Wild dogs are followed by GPS collar and leopards identified by pattern-recognition software, and both decide where the vehicle goes. Afternoons run on into night drives, birding, rock art and sundowners on the riverbed.
Wild dogs are followed by GPS collar and leopards identified by pattern-recognition software
The tents have hardwood back walls to the open-air bathrooms for privacy, larger custom beds, and pieces made by artisans in the region. The bucket showers stayed, deliberately. Canvas, timber and local hardwood, twin beds, and a shaded veranda facing the sand. Hot water arrives by bucket from a wood-fired boiler when it is asked for, and solar power handles everything else, which is not much. Nothing about it pretends to be a lodge.
Meals come out of the open-sided canvas dining and lounge tent, or off a table set in the riverbed under lanterns, with bush picnics by day and dinners around the boma fire at night. Children of any age are welcome, and with only three tents families and small parties often take the camp whole, which is how it is best used. The private Sango airstrip runs to 1,000 metres and handles light aircraft, roughly an hour by charter from Harare.
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accommodation
Three expedition tents sleep six guests at most, each with twin beds, canvas walls and a small shaded veranda looking out over the dry Mzaise riverbed. The bathrooms are open-air and en suite, with a bucket shower filled from a wood-fired boiler, a flush loo, a washbasin and a teak vanity. A separate tent houses visiting guides.
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activities
Walking safaris track black and white rhino and elephant on foot with the reserve's trackers. As a private conservancy, Sango runs morning, afternoon and night drives off-road, plus patrols with the anti-poaching unit and its dogs, rhino monitoring, birding, rock art excursions, and sundowners on the riverbed.
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conservation
The anti-poaching unit and its tracking dogs patrol daily, and rhino monitoring feeds a breeding programme that has restocked other reserves with black rhino. Rewilding work with the Peace Parks Foundation and Hemmersbach Rhino Force has moved thousands of animals to Mozambique's Zinave National Park and Zimbabwe's Rifa Safari Area. Sango funds local schools, healthcare and farming programmes, and employs rangers from surrounding communities.
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