Review: Tembo Plains, Zimbabwe

Wildlife.  It’s brilliant.  Without it we wouldn’t have one of the greatest inventions of all time: steak.  Or National Geographic.  Or The Lion King. So how does a safari lodge operate in an area where decades of hunting have left the wildlife population thinned out and wary? That’s the challenge Tembo Plains is facing.  Let’s see how it gets on.

Getting there

I arrived from Singita Pamushana on a private charter, taking about 90 minutes in the air. The current airstrip in Sapi is roughly 50 minutes from camp by road, though a new one just 20 minutes away is reportedly in the pipeline. All in, the journey from lodge to lodge took around three hours.

Realistically, you are most likely looking at flying into Johannesburg, then taking a flight into Zimbabwe to Harare International Airport, followed by another flight to Sapi, and then the same drive I took to the lodge.  There are easier places to get to.  Like Valhalla.

The welcome was spirited: singing, dancing, and just enough over-the-top enthusiasm to make you feel like a minor royal. There were also little snacks waiting in the car, which I always love.

Setting

Tembo Plains sits on the edge of the Zambezi River, inside the 290,000 acre, private concession of Sapi Private Reserve. This was a hunting area from the 1950s until 2016, when Great Plains Conservation took it over and began the ambitious process of rewilding it. You have access to both Sapi and, if you really fancy a long drive, the neighbouring Mana Pools, giving you over 830,000 acres.  That’s a long game drive.

Rewilding is their core mission here. The reserve itself forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.  I was fortunate to meet some of the team involved in trying to restore this area, and restore it needs – it’s immediately apparent how skittish the animals are, more so than I’d hoped after nearly a decade of tourism. It’s a reminder that entering a new safari market is hard, slow work. At Selinda, it took 15 years for the wildlife to settle. So perhaps patience is part of the package here, too. A quality I’m well known for possessing.  Just ask my dedicated road rage counsellor.

Due to the rains, the property is only open from April until mid-November, so that won’t help much either as some of these animals are forgetting us lovely humans.  Which is a shame, as the setting is undoubtedly beautiful.  The camp is elevated and overlooks the river, with sweeping views and the kind of atmosphere that makes you feel very far from anywhere.  Even the bugs love it. I was bitten immediately.  There seems to be something about Great Plains camps that attract all the bugs, like they’re a fan of the rustic look and all huddle around to discuss its architectural marvel.

Facilities

Tembo Plains is unmistakably a Great Plains property.  You can tell the moment you walk in. The layout, the finishes, the materials, the design signatures, the feeling it may have been constructed from a shipwreck. It’s all the ingredients of every other Great Plains camp: a large open-plan tent with the dining area, library, lounge, and a now-standard open kitchen and bar setup.

Outside, there’s a shaded sitting area, a few dining tables, and a boma. The décor and finishings are consistent with the rest of the portfolio—well done, but nothing dramatically new. Which makes the price point all the more compelling. You’re getting the same hard product you’d find at Selinda or Duba Plains, but for significantly less. As ever, location is everything.

As for connectivity: the internet was registering speeds of less than 1Mbps, which made it feel like a great accomplishment to load a web page without smashing my computer in anger. Don’t plan on Zooming your hedge fund manager from here. You’ll struggle to load Instagram, let alone run a business.

There’s no gym, as is typical with these camps. There is a spa, tucked away from the main area.  I walked to the spa and had one hell of an adrenaline shock—stumbled across an elephant barely five metres away that clearly wasn’t thrilled to see me and made its feelings known. As a weight-loss strategy, I highly recommend it. I’m fairly certain I dropped a solid kilo in pure fear. You know that little ritual before weighing yourself? Wallet, keys, phone, have I taken a dump? That last was taken care of for me. No effort required.

Oh yeah, and the spa itself?  When I did make it back the next day, it is actually quite lovely for something that is ultimately so basic, a canvas-walled room with one treatment bed, overlooking the Zambezi through gauzy netting.

Excuse me, who planted a shit in my pants?!

Later, I found fresh elephant dung right beside my room. This had started to become the equivalent of spotting a dorsal fin in the water and thinking, “I’m sure this’ll be fine.” He was clearly showing me who was boss.  Sure enough, I saw him not long after, this time with a buddy, as I tried to explore the rest of the property and was forced into a tactical retreat. By now, the elephant didn’t feel like wildlife. He felt like a high school bully.  It started to feel personal.  Finally, there was excitement at Tembo Plains.

Room

Tembo Plains offers just five tented accommodations: four one bedroom suites and one two-bedroom suite, the Zanji Suite.  The rooms are wonderfully private.  Not only are they vastly spread out,b ut you enter through massive doors into your own little courtyard.

As a great surprise to no one, the design is unmistakably Great Plains: the layout is reminiscent of Mara Plains, just scaled down a touch. It’s open-plan, with a desk right by the entrance, a minibar tucked into the corner, a sofa and coffee table facing out to the view, and a lone chair tossed in for symmetry.

The king bed sits centre-stage, facing out over the river with the mountains as a dramatic backdrop. Luckily, you can get the same view from the sofa too.  The bathroom is also open-plan, but smartly done. Stonework cleverly conceals the shower and bath, while the toilet is tucked away in its own room. There was a constant, low buzzing noise coming from outside the bathroom though, meaning I must have pissed off the local spirits.

Step outside and you’ll find your standard Great Plains ‘safari gym’: a bike with no computer, so, naturally, it doesn’t count as exercise if you can’t log it. There are also two deckchairs and a small plunge pool, all overlooking that impossibly calming landscape.

But step back inside the tent and it’s a different story. Despite being here in May—Zimbabwe’s version of late spring, heading into winter—it’s sweltering. I like heat. I seek it out. But this felt like my bones were melting. There’s a fan at the end of the bed and the airflow system Great Plains is so fond of, but the latter is bafflingly weak. Apparently it only works if you enclose yourself in mosquito nets, so to cool down, you need to add layers.  Cool story, bro.  Coming straight from Pamushana—with its blissful air conditioning—makes the lack of climate control even more obvious. I wasn’t expecting a refrigerated dome, but I also didn’t expect to sweat out of my eyeballs.

Food & Service

Service had a certain innocence.  The kind that makes the chef come out 20 minutes early to explain the meal.  It felt like they were slowly waking from hibernation. To be fair, they’re only open six months a year, and it shows. There were small but telling oversights: towels weren’t replaced after use; I found an empty can in the vehicle’s bag, clearly not cleaned; and on my final day, I returned to my room to find the curtains still drawn and everything rushed, despite us having nothing scheduled. Some amateur-level errors that simply shouldn’t happen at this level, and things I am not used to seeing anymore.  They felt a bit lost in places.

On arrival, there was no choice for lunch, just whatever they’d decided to serve, and one of those is something I had told them barely five minutes earlier that I hate. And on the boat, snacks appeared, which also were specifically what I’d asked to avoid. The manager later came to apologise unprompted, noting the chef responsible wasn’t on duty.

Dinner was decent, if unmemorable. Breakfast the next morning was a small packed box — fruit, granola, yoghurt, a muffin — missing the sausages I’d requested, and the guide forgot my hot chocolate altogether. Communication gaps were a recurring theme. Things improved with a bush breakfast near camp, beautifully set by the water next to a new elevated platform being built for future sleep-outs. Despite telling them I was full, I somehow ended up eating half my body weight.

I appreciated the handwritten notes on the daily afternoon snacks, which changed each day, though it was odd that only two of the preferences I’d submitted were noted. It defeats the point of sending a detailed list if no one actually reads it.  I don’t enjoy having the endless conversation on repeat.

Activities

Let me begin with what is, objectively, the greatest news of all time. As I was stepping off the plane, the pilot casually asked what I was hoping to see. “Wild dogs,” I said, before my brain even registered the question. At which point he pulled out his phone and showed me photos of the very same plane, now full of sedated wild dogs, just a few days earlier.  Now, before you get concerned this is some weird sexual fetish, it was part of the rewilding effort I mentioned earlier. These dogs were in serious danger where they were, so they were darted, loaded up, and flown in to be rehoused. This is the stuff safari wet dreams are made of.

Watching the conservation work up close is fascinating. The effort that goes into protecting these animals is staggering:  den construction, managing an unexpected pregnancy (naturally, one gave birth the day before they were due to move them), keeping other animals and humans at bay, constant monitoring.  It’s a full-time operation for a team. There are even PhD researchers on-site, living and breathing this work to keep the species from sliding into extinction. It almost makes you slightly less cynical about the world.

I was hovering around the conservation team like an addict trying to befriend their dealer, desperate to meet the dogs.  I imagined I’d sit with them, give a few belly rubs, take some selfies, maybe swap war stories.  In reality, we had to stay at least 50 metres away, up a tree, trying not to breathe too loudly and whispering like we were part of some covert surveillance op.

When I wasn’t loitering near the dogs, I did a walking safari and a boat trip.  The dock is barely 30 seconds from camp.  Canoeing, once a key activity in this area, has been suspended since last year due to some vaguely defined “incidents” at other lodges. No one offered details, so we’ll have to assume a bunch of tourists were wiped out by a Megalodon.  Hopefully influencers.

One morning we efficiently bundled three activities into one outing: a walk to see the wild drive, breakfast in the bush, and then a slow drive back to camp. Later, we went out on the boat for sundowners – plenty of hippos, the odd crocodile – but I’ve always found water-based activities less about wildlife and more about testing how long I can stay conscious while gently bobbing in the sun.

Which leads to my main issue: there’s just no real excitement here. It’s like watching a porno where, after the pizza is delivered, he doesn’t hang around and heads straight on his way home to his wife and kids.

There’s lots and lots of impala, if that’s your thing, but they were so skittish that it was an excitement if they didn’t flee. But this is the first safari camp I ever recall being in, where I didn’t see a single land predator whatsoever during my stay.  Not a single lion, leopard, or hyena. The only truly threatening moment was the smell of my pants after that elephant encounter.

Kids Friendly

Children aged from 6 and above are welcome.

Rating

What rating do you give this place?  Cos the lodge is as good as any Great Plains property. And the setting is spectacular. There are activities—boating, walking safaris—and the conservation work here is genuinely impressive. You want to love it.  

But it’s really very boring because of the lack of animals, or very skittish animals.  At least during my stay.  

But it’s very cheap.  But there’s a reason for that.

The Good

• Accommodation
• Activities

The Bad

• Skittish wildlife

The Luxurious

• Private concession

Conclusion

I’ve always thought it was idiotic when people review hotels after spending just one night.  Their itineraries read more like kidnapping plans than holidays. But here I felt jealous.  Normally if I’m sweating this much it’s from something exciting (get your head outta the gutter), but here the heat and boredom combined into an unrelenting nemesis.

I’m not sure if I can really recommend Tembo Plains. The game is skittish, the sightings inconsistent. But for those wanting the Great Plains experience on a budget, it delivers.  It’s just as good as their other camps (albeit not in the service department), only much cheaper. It’s like wanting to experience Aman and ending up in Bali: yes, it’s a bit shit, but it’s still an Aman.

Tembo feels like a glimpse of what Gorongosa in Mozambique is going to be, once the luxury brands move in – and they will move in.  So if nothing else, the experience gave me more respect for how challenging it is for a company to move into a new area and not only rehabilitate it, but improve it, and make it ready for high-end tourists.  And that’s the thing with Tembo. You’re not going for today. You’re going for a better future. For everyone. Or something something.  Hey, Apple Intelligence enter a better quote. Oh, you’re shit and complete vapourware? Guess that’s the end of the review then.