Hwange Gate Times, Fees and Where Self-Drivers May Go

Hwange (Wankie, in the old spelling) is the park most people add to Victoria Falls, and self-drivers get it wrong by treating it like Kruger. It is 14,650 sq km with no river inside it, three widely separated entry camps and a rule book that is mostly unwritten. ZimParks’ own Hwange page gives directions but no gate hours. This is what I could pin down, last checked 18 October 2026.

The gates and their hours

Every guide and listing I checked gives the same day: 06:00 to 18:00, all year, at all three ZimParks entry points. The Zimbabwe Field Guide has it as “Monday to Sunday, 6am to 6pm”. Self-drivers move in daylight only; night drives need a professional guide.

Two cut-offs matter more than the gate time. Vehicles may not set off between Main Camp and Sinamatella after 14:00, and through traffic from Main Camp to Robins may not set off after 12:00. Both keep you off 125 to 156 km of slow road after dark. Camp Hwange tells its self-drive guests, who must have a 4x4, that entry into the park “must be no later than 15h00”. If you hold a ZimParks booking, check in by 17:30 or the unit may be given away.

• Main Camp, the main visitor centre. Leave the A8 at Cross Mabale (283 km from Bulawayo, 172 km from Victoria Falls, ZimParks’ own figures) and drive 23 km of tar to Main Camp, crossing the railway at the park boundary. Fuel, a shop, the Waterbuck’s Head restaurant and the reception.
• Sinamatella, in the north. From Victoria Falls take the gravel road off the A8 just south of Hwange (Wankie) town and go about 45 km past Mbala in the Deka Safari Area. Camp Hwange puts Victoria Falls to Mbala Gate at two hours. Expert Africa calls the Hwange town approach “much less easy and pleasant” than it was; a 2016 self-drive account blames the coal lorries. Fuel, shop, restaurant and bar.
• Robins, in the north-west. The camp is now under private lease and reopened in 2018, run by the Bayete/Machaba group with 40 rooms, 84 beds and 25 campsites; self-drive guides give its gate as Nantwich. From Victoria Falls, ZimParks says 46 km down the A8, right at the Pandamatenga turn-off, then 64 km of laterite: about 110 km and two hours. From the Pandamatenga border with Botswana it is about 55 km of remote dirt road to Robins, fine in the dry season and muddy in the rains. Botswana lists that post as open 08:00 to 17:00.

Two other gates turn up in itineraries: Mtoa, across the road from Elephant’s Eye, opened in 2018 for that lodge’s guests, and the Ngamo side in the south-east, which Imvelo’s Bomani and Camelthorn guests reach by rail or charter. Neither is a public way in.

Fees and how you pay

The 2026 ZimParks tariff, last checked 18 October 2026, charges an international adult US$24 a day as a day visitor and US$12 a day when sleeping inside the park in a ZimParks lodge, chalet, campsite or picnic site. SADC passport holders pay US$18 and US$10, Zimbabweans US$5 and US$3. Children of 6 to 12 pay half, under 6 nothing. A foreign-registered car is US$10 a day, or US$3 when accommodated; a Zimbabwe-registered hire car US$5 and US$2. All three camps charge the same and a fee paid at one covers the park for the day. The full table is on our Hwange National Park page.

You pay at the reception of whichever camp you enter through, and Camp Hwange’s sheet says fees are “paid by the client on entry to the Park”. ZimParks’ booking FAQ says cash in US dollars or ZiG is taken on site; Visa, Mastercard and EcoCash are for the online booking site. The Western Zimbabwe guide puts it plainly: “credit card facilities at park gates are unreliable, so carry sufficient US dollars”. Every price is set in dollars and that is what you hand over, in small notes. Leaving a car at Main Camp for a lodge to collect you costs US$5, at your own risk.

Why the pumps make the season

Hwange has no permanent natural water. Most of the park sits on Kalahari sand and the rivers are on its edges, not in it. Ted Davison, first warden of the Wankie Game Reserve from 1928, found it nearly empty of game for that reason and boreholes were sunk to feed artificial pans. There are about 60. From roughly May to November natural surface water is scarce and the pans carry the park. Friends of Hwange, which pumps water for wildlife in the park, describes October and November as the point of most stress, with the solar pumps running through the day and batteries letting some pump at night too. The Bhejane Trust runs 49 pumps across its Zimbabwe parks work, mostly solar, moving over a million litres a day, and is putting in a new permanent water supply in Hwange.

That is the whole logic of a Hwange visit. In September a pan like Nyamandhlovu, 12 km from Main Camp with a public platform, fills with elephants because they have little else to drink. Once the rains arrive in November the game disperses and the drives get thinner.

Where you may drive, and where you may not

The park has roughly 480 km of road, most of it in the north and north-east. A high-clearance 2WD manages the main roads and the Main Camp loops from May to October; a 4x4 is needed for Robins, for Deka and Tshakabika, and for anything from December to March. Stay on marked tracks, stay in the vehicle unless you are with a guide or at a platform or picnic site, and keep your distance from elephants. No motorbikes. ZimParks publishes no speed limit for Hwange; the trade quotes 40 km/h and the gravel enforces it anyway.

The loops out of Main Camp are where self-drivers spend their days. The Great Zimbabwe Guide drove two in August 2024: about 180 km on Ndlovu Drive past Tshebe Tshebe, Kaoshe, White Hill, Guvalala and Boss Long One pans, roughly five hours with stops, and a four hour loop towards the Sikumi side past Nyamandhlovu, Ngweshla, Kennedy 1 and 2 and Makwa. Nyamandhlovu, Kennedy 2 and Guvalala have platforms; Ngweshla has a public picnic site. Further north the Sinamatella side has Shumba, Masuma Dam (a thatched hide), Mandavu Dam and Deteema Dam, and at Robins there are the Big Toms and Little Toms hides.

What you may not do is turn off onto a concession. There are nine tourism concessions inside the park, and as the Great Zimbabwe Guide puts it, self-drivers “won’t be allowed to drive in the private concessions”. The Linkwasha concession (Linkwasha and Davison’s camps), Somalisa, The Hide’s small private concession, Nehimba’s 278 sq km in the north and Camp Hwange’s ground in the Sinamatella area are for their own guests. You can drive the public road past them, but not game drive them in your own car.

Getting there

From Bulawayo it is 283 km of A8 to Cross Mabale, three and a half hours in 2024 for the Great Zimbabwe Guide, with one roadblock, potholes the full width of the road about 110 km out and more between Lupane and Hwange. Fill up and shop in Bulawayo. From Victoria Falls it is 172 km to the same turn-off, two and a half to three hours, or US$60 to US$120 a head each way by transfer. Pathfinder buses stop at the park for US$25 to US$50.

The Bulawayo to Victoria Falls railway runs along the park’s eastern edge, and Dete, the village near the Main Camp entrance, has the siding. NRZ restarted the Bulawayo to Victoria Falls overnight train on 18 October 2025: Bulawayo 19:00 on Fridays, Dete about 04:00, Victoria Falls 10:00; back from Victoria Falls 19:00 on Sundays, Dete about 02:00. A first class berth is US$18, an economy seat US$9, bought at the station on the day. Seat 61 tells you to expect arrivals one to four hours late, and NRZ’s website still says all passenger trains are suspended, so ring +263 29 2363522 first. The Elephant Express, Imvelo’s 22 seat open railcar, runs the 70 km from Dete to Ngamo siding in two hours for its Bomani and Camelthorn guests. From 2027 it becomes an activity out of Ngamo, and the full Dete transfer only runs for six or more.

Hwange airport, 20 km from Main Camp, has no scheduled flights; charters from Victoria Falls take 45 minutes and the remote camps expect you to arrive that way.

Day trips from Victoria Falls

They exist and they sell: an early hotel pick-up, mid-morning at the park, two game drives with a picnic lunch, and back around 18:00. The Abroad Guide’s write-up of one quotes US$330 a person with the park fee extra; it still says US$20, the rate until January 2026, so budget US$24 plus the vehicle. A day mostly spent on the road, with the middle of it in the heat, is a poor trade. Make it two nights at Main Camp or in Dete instead.

Where to stay

Inside the park, ZimParks has chalets at Main Camp (from US$60 a night for one bedroom, US$23 for a campsite of up to three people), renovated lodges at Sinamatella, and lets you sleep at the Shumba, Ngweshla, Masuma, Deteema, Kennedy 1 and Mandavu picnic sites for US$235 a night for the whole site, the best deal in the park for a group of six. Check-in from 14:00, check-out by 10:00, booked through ZimParks Central Reservations with the conservation fee on top.

Outside the gates, Dete is a railway village with lodges along the Dete Vlei and the Sikumi forest: Gwango, Miombo, Ganda, Elephant’s Eye and Hwange Safari Lodge are among the ones we list. Sikumi Tree Lodge, on the vlei, had become a little run down when the Victoria Falls Guide looked in 2018. Sikumi and Ngamo are gazetted forests, which the Forestry Commission manages, not park land; Bomani and Camelthorn sit at Ngamo. The Painted Dog Conservation centre opposite the airport, free and open 08:00 to 17:00 except the last weekend of the month, is the thing to do in Dete on the afternoon you arrive. The camps by place are on our Hwange National Park and Dete pages.