Selous Safari Camp Review

Selous Safari Camp, now trading as Siwandu, is a luxury tented camp on the shore of Lake Nzerakera in Nyerere National Park, southern Tanzania. Run by the Selous Safari Company, it divides into two small camps of canvas suites and builds its days around boat safaris, game drives and walking. Siwandu is the reserve’s original luxury camp, sitting in a palm grove beside the Rufiji River waterways in one of the most game rich corners of the park.

If you have been reading around and feel confused by the two names, you are not imagining it. The camp people once knew as Selous Safari Camp was rebranded as Siwandu, and the reserve around it changed name too. This review works through what the camp is actually like to stay in, which activities earn their reputation, when to go, and the honest trade offs worth weighing before you book.

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Siwandu Safari Camp on the Shore of Lake Nzerakera

The setting does a lot of the work here. Siwandu safari camp stands on the edge of Lake Nzerakera, an oxbow lake that peels off the Rufiji River and holds water long into the dry months. Palms shade the tents. Hippos grunt from the shallows through the night, and elephants drift down to drink where the lawn meets the waterline. That lake frontage is the single reason the camp feels the way it does, because so much of the wildlife comes to you rather than the other way round.

Location matters for a practical reason as well. The camp sits in the northeastern sector of Nyerere National Park, the part of the old Selous Game Reserve that carries the heaviest concentrations of game and the richest network of channels and lakes. You are close to the Rufiji, close to the delta of side channels, and close to open country where drives run well. Few camps in this corner of Tanzania combine river, lake and land access from one base as neatly as this one does.

A quick word on the name change, because it trips up a lot of first time visitors. In 2019 the Tanzanian government carved roughly the northern two thirds of the Selous Game Reserve into a new national park and named it after Julius Nyerere, the country’s founding president. The tourist camps, including this one, now fall inside Nyerere National Park, while a large hunting block to the south keeps the Selous name. The camp itself dropped the old Selous Safari Camp label and became Siwandu. Same company, same lake, same tents. New signage.

Luxury Tented Suites at This Selous Safari Camp

Accommodation is the reason many people pay the premium for this Selous safari camp, and it holds up. There are thirteen large canvas suites in total, each raised on a wooden platform and topped with palm leaf thatch that keeps the interior cool through the hot part of the day. The bedrooms are octagonal, generously sized, with a big bed under a mosquito net and a bathroom set to the side that opens onto an open air shower. Canvas walls roll up so you wake to the lake rather than a tent seam.

The word suite is fair rather than marketing gloss. These are proper rooms in tented form, with space to spread out, a shaded veranda facing the water, and comfortable chairs for the slow middle hours when you are back from a morning activity and the heat sits heavy. Guests can take a plunge in the camp pool after a drive, then settle on a sun lounger and watch the lake do its thing. The camp calls this the armchair safari, and on a still afternoon it is close to the truth.

Two Camps and Two Pools: How the Lodge Is Laid Out

This is the detail that sets Siwandu apart from most tented lodges, and it is worth understanding before you arrive. The camp is not one unit but two separate small camps strung along the lake shore. North Camp holds six tents and South Camp holds seven. Each runs as its own little operation with a private lounge, a bar, a dining area, a kitchen, a swimming pool, a jetty for boats, its own vehicles, its own walking guides and its own host.

What that gives you is intimacy. You share the lodge experience with a handful of other guests rather than a full house, and there is no shuttling back and forth between a busy central mess and your room. Everything you need sits within your camp. On a full booking the whole property still feels small, and on a quiet week you can end up with a camp that runs almost as a private safari house.

The honest flip side is that the layout suits people who want quiet and space more than people who want a big sociable lodge buzz. If you like meeting a crowd of fellow travellers over dinner, the small camp model will feel restrained. Most guests come here precisely to escape that, so it lands as a strength for the right traveller and a mismatch for the wrong one.

Boat Safaris on Lake Nzerakera and the Rufiji River

The boat safari is the headline activity, and it is the thing Siwandu does better than almost anyone in the region because of where the camp sits. You launch straight from the jetty onto Lake Nzerakera and glide out among pods of hippo, crocodiles hauled up on the banks, and thick birdlife working the shallows. From the lake you can push into the channels of the Rufiji delta, where the water narrows and the wildlife closes in.

The camp runs two kinds of craft. Sturdy metal boats with canopies handle the game viewing and give shade through the middle of the day, while flat pontoon boats let a small group dine or take a sundowner drink out on the water as the light drops. A river based safari changes the pace completely after a bumpy morning drive, and many guests rate the boat time as the best part of the whole stay. Sightings are never guaranteed, but big concentrations of hippo and a strong cast of water birds are close to a given on the lake in the dry season.

Game Drive Safaris in Nyerere National Park

A game drive safari from Siwandu covers the open country back from the water, and it fills out the picture that the boats begin. The northern sector of Nyerere National Park carries good numbers of elephant, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, impala and greater kudu, with lion regularly seen and leopard turning up for the patient. The park is also one of the strongholds for African wild dog, one of the continent’s rarer predators, though as with any wild dog country you need luck and time on your side.

Drives run in the cool of early morning and again in the late afternoon, with the vehicles from each camp heading out separately so you are rarely part of a convoy. Because the wider park sees far fewer visitors than the northern Tanzania circuit, a sighting here often belongs to you alone rather than to a ring of parked vehicles. That solitude is a large part of what people come south for, and it is a fair reason to weigh Siwandu against the busier famous parks.

Walking Safaris Straight From Camp

The walking safari is where the guiding at Siwandu really shows, and the wider park has a strong reputation for it. Setting out on foot with an armed guide from camp, you drop the engine noise and start reading the bush at ground level: fresh tracks in the sand, which tree the elephants stripped last night, the alarm call that means a predator moved through. It is slower and quieter than a drive, and it changes how you see everything else for the rest of the trip.

Walking is not about ticking off big animals up close, and any honest guide will tell you so. You keep a safe distance from the large and dangerous species, and the real reward is the detail that a vehicle blurs past. Because each camp keeps its own walking guides, group sizes stay small, which matters a great deal on foot where a big line of people simply does not work. Anyone drawn to a more active, hands on safari should put the walking near the top of the list.

Food, Service and the Daily Rhythm of a Safari Stay

Day to day, a safari stay at Siwandu runs on a gentle rhythm that most guests settle into fast. An early wake with coffee, a morning activity in the cool, a big brunch back at camp, then the long quiet of midday when the heat pushes everyone to the shade and the pool. Activities pick up again in the late afternoon and often run into a sundowner, with dinner back at your camp under the thatch. Meals draw consistent praise for being fresh and well cooked rather than fussy, and the service earns steady marks for warmth without stiffness.

The camp is owned and run by the Selous Safari Company, trading in the market as Laba Laba, a Tanzanian operator with a long track record in the south of the country and a sister camp, Jongomero, over in Ruaha. The company puts a share of profit into conservation work in the region, which sits well with the low volume, low footprint feel of the place. None of that guarantees a perfect stay, but it does mean the operation is run by people who know this ground rather than a distant chain.

Best Time for a Selous Safari at Siwandu

Timing shapes a Selous safari here more than almost anything else, and the camp itself takes the decision partly out of your hands. Siwandu closes through the long rains in the middle of March until the end of May, when the roads turn and the bush grows too thick for good viewing. The prime window runs from June to October, the dry season, when the land opens up, the animals crowd the shrinking water, and both the drives and the boat safaris hit their stride.

Expect warm days and cool nights in that dry window, with daytime temperatures climbing toward the mid thirties and nights dropping to around sixteen degrees. The shoulder months either side of the closure carry their own appeal, greener and quieter with fewer guests, though sightings take more patience when the water is spread out and the grass is high. For a first visit built around reliable game and the full run of activities, the dry months are the safe call.

Getting to Siwandu for Your Safari

Almost everyone reaches Siwandu by light aircraft, and the fly in access is one of the quiet pleasures of the trip. Small planes run from Dar es Salaam, with connections tying in from Zanzibar, Arusha, Ruaha and the coast, operated by carriers such as Coastal Aviation, Safari Airlink, Auric Air and ZanAir. The flight from Dar es Salaam to the camp’s own strip takes roughly forty five minutes, and the aerial view over the Rufiji as you drop in sets the tone before you land.

On the ground there are two options. Guests flying into the shared Mtemere Airstrip face a scenic drive of about an hour to camp, which doubles as a first game drive. Those on the right schedule can instead use Siwandu’s own private airstrip, a matter of a few minutes from the tents. Road transfer from the airstrip to camp is included in most rates, so the arrival admin stays light and you are usually settling into your suite within a short time of touching down.

Frequently Asked Questions About Selous Safari Camp