27 places to stay
Every lodge, camp and campsite in Lower Zambezi National Park, in the Chiawa game management area upstream and at the Chirundu gateway. Twenty-seven live properties, with 2026 rates where operators publish them and a plain "not published" where they do not.
Ownership in this valley is unusually independent: nineteen of the twenty-seven properties are owner or family-run businesses rather than group brands, and several have been in the same hands for thirty years. Chiawa Safaris opened the park's first camp in 1989 and has supported wild dog research here for more than two decades. Two properties downstream are Zambian-owned, though we could not confirm ownership nationality for those with certainty and have said so on their pages.
27 places to stay
The camp that started tourism in this park and still sets the standard. Classic canvas under thatch on the riverbank, guiding that people book years ahead for, and a family that has been in this valley since the late 1980s. Guests can join Conservation Lower Zambezi ecologists in the field on wild dog work from April 2026.
Five open-fronted chalets under ana trees, smaller and rawer than its sister camp and preferred by many repeat visitors for exactly that reason. Leopard is what people come back talking about: across roughly thirty logged traveller reports at this camp and Chiawa, leopard success was recorded on every one, which is a small sample but a striking one.
Operating since 1996 and one of the two Green Safaris camps in the park, not a Time + Tide camp whatever some agent sites say. The private guide included with every booking is the real differentiator: you set your own schedule rather than sharing a vehicle. The Chifungulu Channel behind camp is the calmest canoeing water in the park.
The smaller, quieter sibling of Sausage Tree, sharing the same guiding team and the same stretch of river for meaningfully less money. Three tents and a family house means you rarely see another guest, and the included private guiding is unusual at this price point inside a national park.
Built on the site of the old Ana Tree Lodge in the quiet eastern half of the park, where vehicle traffic is a fraction of what it is near the Chongwe gate. Twelve raised suites look over the Mushika floodplain and the winterthorn parkland that draws elephant through the dry season.
The most contemporary architecture in the park and the only in-park camp advertising dates across most of the calendar. Note that road access still fails in the rains whatever the brochure dates say, so confirm how you will actually reach it if you are booking outside the standard April to November window.
Owner-run and deliberately simple, on the island where the long-closed Kulefu camp once stood. If you want to move through this park on foot and by paddle rather than in a vehicle, this outfit and its two sister camps are the specialists.
Right on the Chongwe confluence, so you are a few minutes from the park gate without paying in-park rates. Older guides list this as an independent camp: it is not, chongwe.com redirects to Time + Tide, and the three Chongwe properties are all run by that group.
Two suites built as sculpture as much as accommodation, open to the river and the escarpment behind. Everything is private: your own guide, your own vehicle, your own schedule. Priced accordingly, and it sells out early in the September and October peak.
The best-known exclusive-use house in the valley, taken as a whole by families and groups of friends. With a four-adult minimum the per-person rate makes more sense than it first looks, and you get a private guide and vehicle in the bargain.
The largest and most hotel-like property on this stretch, and the one that stays open when the park camps close. Because it sits in the game management area you pay no national park entry fee unless you cross into the park, which the lodge states plainly on its own site. That makes it the natural base for a mixed trip.
If fishing is the reason you are coming, this is the specialist. All angling here is catch-and-release, and the tigerfish season peaks from late August into November. The build is solid rather than tented, which suits guests who want air conditioning and a door that locks.
Considerably glossier than the classic tented camps, with a design language closer to a resort than a bush camp. It sits in the game management area near the airstrip, so access is easy and no park fee applies unless you cross into the park.
A complete rebuild on the site of the old Safari Par Excellence camp, run by the family behind Anabezi and Amanzi. The draw is the private reserve: you can walk from the river up towards the ridge without the park's vehicle restrictions, and the reserve is yours alone. Ignore descriptions of the old camp, it is a different property now.
The obvious answer for anyone driving themselves. Seven private campsites with their own bathrooms, tented chalets for those who want a bed, and no national park entry fee as long as you stay on the game management area side. Long-established and run by owners who live here.
Run by an Italian family and unlike anything else on this river: the food is the talking point, and the drive from Lusaka is short enough to make a two-night stay viable. A sensible first or last stop on a Zambian road trip.
The far downstream option, in the Rufunsa game management area below the park near the Luangwa confluence. The Driman family took the lodge on nearly four years ago when it was rundown, and the restoration is still running: thatching is being finished now, then the bar and dining spaces. That is why you will not have seen it advertised. It began as a fishing camp and still suits fishermen, but it now also takes birdwatchers and international groups working their way from the far end of the park through to South Luangwa. What they say makes it different is the quiet: at times you can have whole stretches of the river to yourself.
Four suites in the far east of the park, sold predominantly as a sole-use camp for families and small groups. If you want the park to yourself with a private guide and no other guests at dinner, this is the property built for it.
The second link in Tusk & Mane's canoe circuit: you paddle in, sleep on an island, and paddle on. Camps like this are the reason the Lower Zambezi is different from a drive-based park, and there is nothing comparable across the river.
Almost all tourism in this park happens on a narrow strip of valley floor beside the water. Tafara Springs is one of the very few products that takes you inland to the escarpment edge, which is a genuinely different landscape and a different species list.
The island annexe to Kanyemba Lodge: four stilted chalets, no other guests, and the river running past on both sides. Booked through the main lodge and generally combined with a night or two on the mainland.
One of the older operations on the river and one of the few places running its own multi-day canoe trips rather than reselling someone else's. The mix of chalets, self-catering cottages and campsites makes it flexible for mixed groups and for anyone driving in.
Closed until further notice. When it was running it was one of the cheapest beds in the valley and a favourite with Zambian residents driving down for a weekend: self-cater or hand it over to the kitchen, and no national park entry fee unless you cross into the park. Ownership nationality is not documented, so we have not claimed it either way.
Take the house, bring your own food and drink, and split the cost. For a family or a group of friends this is the cheapest way to sleep on this river, and there is camping on the same stretch of bank if some of your party would rather be under canvas.
Not a safari lodge so much as the gateway everyone passes through. Tony Weber told us the old Kafue pontoon is long gone, replaced by the Chiawa bridge in 2015, and that the opening of that bridge changed what they do here considerably. What they run now is the water: transfers to the camps downstream, fishing, game viewing and birding trips, and a boat run into the park where their own game viewer vehicles are waiting, so you get the river and the land in one day. They also do canoe safaris sleeping on the river for up to three nights, and keep a bus for airport collections and cross-border runs.
Formerly Zambezi Breezers and briefly Wagtail River Camp, now Breezes River Lodge under new owners. Publish or search the new name, since the old listings are stale. Straightforward budget camping and chalets right on the river, handy for anyone crossing to or from Zimbabwe.
A small self-catering fishing lodge downstream of the park boundary. We list it because it is trading, but almost nothing about it is formally published: no website, no rate card, no season. Contact it directly and confirm everything before you drive out.
Nothing matches all of those at once. Take one filter off and try again.
Every price on this page is in US dollars.
Indicative 2026 rates from operators' own rate cards, gathered July 2026. Always confirm with the lodge. Two things shift the real comparison here. First, camps inside the park add $85 to $120 per person per night in bundled park and conservation fees, and most quote that separately. Second, camps in the Chiawa game management area carry no national park entry fee at all unless you cross into the park, which is why a GMA bed can work out far cheaper than the headline rate suggests.
Facilities and activities come from each property's own website, read in July 2026. We only record what that property's own page states. A blank means we could not check it, not that it is missing. Filtering on a facility shows only what we confirmed, and tells you how many places we could not check.
