The cheapest way in
Breezes River Lodge
Straightforward budget camping and chalets right on the river near Chirundu, priced in kwacha rather than dollars.
Zambia · national park since 1983
Lower Zambezi National Park Independent Guides & Information
One hundred and twenty kilometres of the Zambezi River with a 1,200 metre escarpment behind it and Zimbabwe's Mana Pools on the far bank. Canoe safaris are the signature activity, night drives are legal on this side of the river, and elephant are seen on essentially every trip.
Photo: Hanay (CC BY 3.0)
Why camps charge $85 to $110 a night in park fees, and why that is correct
All 27 camps, split by whether they sit inside the park or the GMA
The zebra correction, and other things this park is wrong about online
No bookings taken here, and no preferred camps
Where Lower Zambezi National Park is, and which gate you want
Lower Zambezi is reached at Chongwe Gate, through the Chiawa game management area on the valley floor below Lusaka, about 216 kilometres and a minimum five hours by road, or 35 minutes by light aircraft to Jeki airstrip inside the park. Chirundu, on the Zimbabwe border, is the last fuel stop and the point past which mobile coverage disappears.
- 1 Chongwe Gate The main western entrance and DNPW ranger post, reached through the Chiawa game management area
- 2 Jeki airstrip The airstrip inside the park, about 35 minutes from Lusaka by light aircraft
- 3 Royal airstrip The Chiawa game management area strip, serving Royal Zambezi, Zambezi Grande, Baines' and the Chongwe properties
- 4 Chiawa village The community the game management area is named after, on the road down the valley
- 5 Chirundu One-stop border post with Zimbabwe, the last fuel and the boat embarkation point
- 6 Lusaka Where the road and the flights start, about 216 km and a minimum five hours by road
- Pan with a hide or viewing platform
- Dam
- Gate or barrier on the map
- Tarred trunk road
Why this guide exists, and where the numbers come from
This guide is written by someone who overlanded much of Africa in his own Land Cruiser with a rooftop tent, and for whom the national parks were what stayed. The information about them online was usually missing, wrong or years old: fees from three tariff sheets ago, camps that had closed, roads described by people who had never driven them.
So this guide runs on the park authority's own tariff document rather than a copied operator page, on thirty-year climate normals rather than brochure weather, and on what the camps tell us directly. Every claim carries a date. Where DNPW is silent, so are we, apart from saying that it is silent.
Nothing here is for sale. Listing a camp is free and no position on any page can be bought. Some outbound links earn us a small commission, and that changes neither the order of a list nor a single figure on these pages.
Found something out of date? Tell us and it changes the same week.
Where to stay in Lower Zambezi National Park
From a riverside budget lodge at Chirundu to the camp that started tourism in this valley. These four are not the best four; they are the four that mark out the range.
Locally owned, downstream
Redcliff Zambezi Lodge
The far downstream option, in the Rufunsa game management area near the Luangwa confluence, taken on and restored by a local family after years of being rundown.
Mid-range, self-drive friendly
Mvuu Lodge
Seven private campsites with their own bathrooms plus tented chalets, and no national park entry fee as long as you stay in the game management area.
The top end
Chiawa Camp
The camp that started tourism in this park and still sets the standard, run by a family that has been in the valley since the late 1980s.
Everything you need to plan a visit
Entry fees
Park entry is $25 a day, $30 self-drive, but in-park camps bundle $85 to $120 per person per night. The full picture.
See the fees →Lodges & camps
All 27 places to stay, inside the park, in the Chiawa game management area and at the Chirundu gateway, with ownership marked.
Browse lodges →Getting there
Thirty-five minutes by air from Lusaka in season, or about five hours by road and pontoon. No scheduled flights from 16 November.
Plan the route →Wildlife
Elephant on every trip, lion on 96 per cent of them and leopard on 88 per cent, using measured sighting rates rather than invented population counts.
What you'll see →Best time to visit
September for canoeing and October for game viewing, with the camp season running roughly April to mid-November.
Pick your month →Things to do
Canoe trails, boat cruises, walking with an armed scout, legal night drives and catch-and-release tigerfishing.
See activities →Our own research
We priced every park in Africa
We collect the official tariff of every park we cover, convert it, and hold each one to the same standard day. Twenty-nine parks are in the index now, the famous ones included. These three pages come out of that table.
The most expensive safari parks in Africa
Ngorongoro charges $278 for a standard day and $148 of that is the descent into the crater. The ranking straight down, with the line item behind each number.
See the ranking →The most expensive parks for self-drivers
One person, one car, no one to split the vehicle fee or the campsite with. Uganda's foreign-vehicle tariff turns the order upside down.
See the self-drive ranking →Africa's most expensive published safari beds
The highest nightly rates any camp in our network puts in writing, and why the real top of the market names no price at all.
See the rates →Latest updates to this guide
Every change to this guide, dated.
- 2026-09-13 Twenty new pages: what a trip actually costs, the park that was a presidential hunting ground, health, camping in the Chiawa GMA, flying to Royal and Jeki, Chirundu, the definitive canoeing guide, the wet season, and a page for every month. See the page
- 2026-09-13 Two comparison guides now point here from our sister sites: South Luangwa or Lower Zambezi, and Mana Pools or Lower Zambezi. See the page
- 2026-09-11 Repaired the outbound link to Kanyemba's lodge page after their site moved it. See the page
- 2026-09-08 Added hire-car and flight links to the getting-there page, marked as paid links because they are. See the page
- 2026-09-06 All outbound lodge links on this site are now nofollow, so a listing here is information, not a traded favour.