I am surprised that Mana is fully booked! The prices did go up, you didn’t used to have to book the full capacity of the site when at Nyamepi. You could contact manapools.com to see if they have any path to booking the non-riverfront sites at Nyamepi, which are, I think, $130/night.

Ruaha is great, but will not have the volume of animals as Mana Pools. Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing you’ll see lots of things, but distances are farther and you’ll have to work more to find the animals. The good news is you don’t have to book ahead to go there. There are two public campsites and they will not be full. Vehicle rental in East Africa is generally not as high quality as Southern Africa, but that is slowly changing. Check out Tanzania https://tanzaniaunravelled.com. There are other options as well, but I’m pretty sure they have the nicest (but expensive) vehicles. We did a youtube video of Ruaha if you want to get an idea of what it is like: https://youtu.be/6ZIW0dYPr7M?si=GSeiQMQM0-Ax5EoA

Good luck!

I don’t recall wifi at the gate, but they seemed to have reliable communications for their computer system. We paid by credit card without issue. I completely agree about camping outside being better than the Bandas, all down to personal preference.

I think you’d be fine in a ground tent. This is the norm for mobile safaris, and the lions in East Africa are generally much less habituated to the ones in, for example, Mabua in Botswana – famous for investigating campsites.

Thank you for the links, I will definitely check them out!

Thanks a lot for the prompt reply and useful information. Do they have wifi at the gate (sometime this is required for paying by card)?
I understand you recommend the Ifuguru one.
With all these lions around would you feel safe sleeping a ground tent? We are two and will have a look at the Bandas bus sleeping outside is such fun. We slept on the ground in Serengeti and had an exciting elephant visit (they opened our 5 liter water bottles).
I will read more in your blog and might come up with more questions.
I don’t know whether you made it to Amboseli but here is a nice video I shot there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvAkj8MDAS4.
You might be interested to have a look at the MOOC I filmed mainly in Africa , the US (some not far from Santa Cruz and Monterey) and Israel. https://campus.gov.il/en/course/huji-acd-huji-85002-eng/ or here https://www.coursera.org/learn/sex-from-molecules-to-elephants?
All the best
Michael

Hello Michael – So glad you found the post helpful. Thanks for reading! Overall the tsetses were not bad in Ruaha – we drove with the windows down most of the time and had no issues. Maybe some in the west side of the park and towards Mdonya campsite. This could be seasonal, I don’t know. Friends stayed outside the park recently and said the tsetses were many, so I think it is very localized.

You may be able to book a special campsite online now. I warn you, the process is very convoluted and many have given up. Go to “e-Services” tab here: https://www.tanzaniaparks.go.tz/announcements/use-of-tanapa-online-reservation-system – register using the “Private Visitors” menu, and after registering you can use the “Online reservations” menu. Somewhere on the Tanapa website there is a step by step guide. If I remember correctly you have to use the reservation system to book park fees, accomodation and vehicle all separately, not at once, and it must be done in the right order. I did hear that now they accept credit cards for online payment, which is new, so you may be able to pull it off. That said, you’ll almost certainly find availability at the gate for special campsites at Ruaha.

Check the Tanapa rate sheet for the Bandas in Ruaha, depending on how many people you are they can be less expensive.

Good luck and enjoy!

I think your read on the situation in Uganda is accurate. Things there seem to be at a stage where the $50 vs $150 rule is applied very unevenly. This is due to the change in the rules for Ugandan parks, changing to a per/day vs per/visit fee structure, with rules given to staff conflicting the published rules. Not surprisingly this has lead to confusion for all!

The good thing about Tanzania parks is that they’re never full, so unlike Botswana for example, you can just extend or shorten your stay as you like on any particular visit, no problem. This tailoring is really nice, allowing you to extend if you have your luck and verve with you, or to trim things a bit short if the animals are shy or you’re not feeling up to it.

We also have 12 nights planned in Ugandan Parks where we may encounter similar issues due to their fairly recent changes to 2,000kg vehicles. My understanding is that this is not as rigidly enforced. Our vehicle registration papers also show Hagrid as a “pick-up”, which, as I understand may drop the vehicle from a $150 to a $50 category, hope this is correct advice I have?