Game Safari Lodge for Sale in Tanzania

Beside Africa's Largest Game Park on a Wild River Bank

This is a boutique game safari lodge in Tanzania. It is set on the high banks of the Rufiji River outside the Selous Game Reserve, Africa's biggest, with huge populations of lions and elephants and other large animals. The setting is truly spectacular, especially at sunset, as the river is about a mile wide at this point, and is home to great numbers of hippos and crocodiles.

The lodge combines a feeling of being close to nature, with modern comforts. There are four en-suite rooms built from local materials and with thatched roofs, and a luxury en-suite tent on a 2 metre high platform. The rooms face out over the river, and the tent faces the bush, with a large balcony looking out across an animal waterhole to the trees and grassland beyond. There is lots of space to put up more luxury tents, each concealed from the next by bushes and trees. The tent and three of the rooms are very spacious, with double beds and 2 or 3 single beds as required for families; the other room is a double. The rooms have mosquito netting on windows and large bednets.

Assets include a Landrover adapted for safaris with a 'pop-up' roof, a Toyotal Landcruiser with viewing roof hatches, and a sturdy aluminium 6 metre long river boat which can carry ten guests in comfort and safety upstream and into the lakes in the park. There is a generator which is used in the evening in conjunction with an inverter and batteries, in order that guests can use a bedside fan and charge equipment at night. There is a borehole with an electric pump to supply water year round. Another asset is a very effective website.

The lodge under the present British owner/manager has established a sound reputation as an efficiently run place where guests are warmly welcomed and receive excellent service as well as very good food. Dinner is usually served outside under the trees and stars with attractive candle-lit tables. The lodge is priced in the middle of the range, attracting guests from Europe as well as the very large local expatriate community working in development or in the private sector. There are numerous repeat visitors and friends or family of previous visitors. Occupancy varies according to the seasons, with 2 very rainy months (April and May) during part of which the lodge closes for maintenance. From October through to early March the place is frequently full to capacity.

The lodge mainly sells packages including road transport from the capital Dar es Salaam (five hours), accommodation with full board, and a choice of activities which include game drives, river boat trips and bush walks, all with a professional guide. There is an airport nearby at Mtemere, and many guests arrive by plane before flying on to Zanzibar or elsewhere.