Activities
Things to do in Nyerere
Boat safaris are the reason this park is different. Walking is excellent. Night drives, contrary to almost everything written online, are not permitted inside the park.
Boat safaris on the Rufiji
This is the signature. Almost no other Tanzanian park offers boating, and here it is the best way to see the place: hippo pods by the hundred, crocodiles on every sandbank, elephants coming down to drink, and bee-eater colonies at eye level in the riverbanks.
The park charges $20 per person; camps build it into their rates. Go at dawn or in the last hour of light.
Walking safaris
Walks run with an armed ranger and cost $20 for up to four hours or $25 beyond that, plus a $20 group ranger fee. The miombo and the river terraces make for good walking country, and several camps offer fly camping, where you walk out and sleep under canvas.
Night drives: the thing everyone gets wrong
Night drives are not permitted inside Nyerere National Park. They were possible when this was all Selous Game Reserve, and they still run in the Selous blocks to the south, but the 2019 regazettement changed the rules and most operator copy has not caught up.
It matters because it explains the leopard numbers: only 29 per cent of visitors see one here, in a park with the highest recorded leopard density in miombo anywhere.