Maputo National Park
Expert Reviews (2)
Mozambique Parks
Ariadne is a renowned African wildlife photographer whose work is featured in many well-known guidebooks and magazines.
3 people found this review helpful.
The Perfect Beach & Bush Combo
Maputo National Park with its long sandy beaches, forested dunes, mangrove forests, coastal lakes and wetlands is stunningly beautiful.
You can easily visit the park on a day trip from Maputo, but an overnight stay is recommended. Waking up to the sound of crashing waves and enjoying breakfast while watching the sun rise over the ocean is a fantastic way to start the day before heading out on a game drive.
We spent a day exploring every corner of the park. Driving up and down the dunes on sandy tracks requires a bit of skill, which adds to the adventure. Wildlife was relatively scarce, but we saw some giraffes and several herds of zebra and wildebeest. Reedbuck are very common in the grassland areas and we saw a lot of nyalas in the forest patches. We also saw several red duikers scurrying around the undergrowth, but they never stuck around long enough for a picture.
The park, a refuge for coastal elephants, is linked up with Tembe Elephant Park in South Africa via the Futi Corridor. We saw signs these giants were around (elephant dung and broken branches), but the animals themselves eluded us.
Back at camp, I squeezed in a barefoot run on the beach followed by a swim at sunset. I can’t think of a better beach and bush combo.
Philip is an acclaimed travel writer and author of many guidebooks, including the Bradt guides to Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.
2 people found this review helpful.
Elephant & Bird Nirvana
Maputo National Park is the most accessible place to see wildlife in southern Mozambique. This rewarding and underrated safari destination lies about 1.5 hours’ drive south of the Mozambican capital Maputo, and is even closer to Ponto do Ouro, a popular beach resort that practically borders South Africa. The most striking aspect of the park is its attractive scenery, which incorporates 50km of wide sandy Indian Ocean beaches hemmed in by forested dunes, along with a mosaic of freshwater lakes, dune forest, open grassland and thick acacia and albizia woodland. It also protects the waters immediately offshore, and forms part of the Ndumo-Tembe-Futi Transfrontier Conservation Area, which otherwise lies mainly within South Africa.
Formerly known as Maputo Special Reserve, this park was first set aside in the 1930s to protect the only naturally occurring population of coastal elephants in southern Africa. It is now roamed by around 450 to 500 elephants and the odds of seeing a few tuskers on game drives are excellent. Other wildlife you're likely to see includes buffalo, hippo, giraffe, zebra and a good variety of antelope including greater kudu, blue wildebeest, nyala and red duiker. Elephants aside, this is not a great destination for the Big Five and large predators: rhino and lion are absent, and cheetah, leopard and spotted hyena are very seldom seen. I thought the birding was exceptional – likely ticks include African pygmy goose, palm-nut vulture, Livingstone’s turaco, Rudd’s apalis, Woodwards’ batis, Neergaard’s sunbird and rosy-breasted longclaw – while ocean safaris offer a great chance of seeing dolphins and (seasonally) whales. We stayed at the recently opened Montebelo Milibangalala Bay & Resort, which has an idyllic location on a sandy beach where you can run or walk barefoot for several kilometers and not see another person.