Town · Mashonaland West, Zimbabwe
Kariba
Zimbabwe's lake town, built in the 1950s for the dam builders and now the base for houseboats, tigerfish and boats into Matusadona. Hot, hilly and low, with the dam wall at one end.
Short answer
Kariba is in Mashonaland West, Zimbabwe. This page lists 16 places to stay, 2 places to eat and drink and 4 sights. The nearest park with an entry fee on this site is Matusadona National Park, about 51 km away, where international adults pay from US$24.
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- Malaria
- Kariba is in the Zambezi valley, and the UK's TravelHealthPro puts the valley in its all-year malaria band, not the November to June band that covers the rest of the country below 1,200 m.
- Places to stay
- 16
- Eat and drink
- 2
- Sights
- 4
In and around Kariba
22 places listedWhere to stay in Kariba 16
- 16.53°S 28.79°EHotelCaribbea Bay Resort
- 16.53°S 28.80°EHotelCarribea Bay Hotel
- 16.53°S 28.82°EHotelCutty Sark Hotel
- 16.53°S 28.86°ECampsiteJ10 Bush Camp
- 16.53°S 28.81°EHotelKariba Breezes Hotel
- 16.54°S 28.76°EHotelKushinga Lodge
- 16.54°S 28.76°EHotelLake View Hotel
- 16.53°S 28.77°ECampsiteLinos Camp Site
- 16.52°S 28.80°EHotelLodge
Show all 16 places to stay
- Lodge · Hotel
- Lomagundi Lakeside Association · Hotel
- Mopani Camping & Caravan Park · Campsite
- Most High Hotel · Hotel
- Tamarind Lodge · Chalet
- ZPC Trainee Hostel · Hostel
- ZV Hotel · Hotel
Sights 4
- Dam wall viewpoint & curiosViewpoint
- Nyamoumba Lodge ManagerAttraction
- Nyamoumba Lodge WorkshopAttraction
- Old "A" CampRuins
Restaurants and cafes 1
- ZPC Yatch ClubRestaurant
Bars and pubs 1
- Municipal Beer HallPub
Kariba is a town that exists because of a wall. Costain built it in the mid to late 1950s to house the dam workers, and it has sat at the north-eastern end of Lake Kariba ever since, low and hot in the Zambezi Valley in Mashonaland West, with Zambia across the water. The 2022 census counted 27,600 people. For visitors it is the base for the lake: houseboats, tigerfish and boats into Matusadona.
Getting there
Harare is 365 km away by road, and plenty of buses run between the two, though your own vehicle is better. Road conditions are in the self-drive guide. Kariba Airport, 4 km east of town, has a 1,650 m tar runway; Fastjet announced Harare and Victoria Falls flights in 2023, so check the timetable.
The other way in is by water. Kariba Ferries runs a car ferry the length of the lake to Mlibizi, about 22 hours with meals on board, saving over 1,250 km of driving.
When to go
October is the worst, with a mean daily high of 35.1 °C. Most rain falls from November to March, January wettest at 191.6 mm, and from June to September there are no rainy days at all. July nights drop to 11.1 °C. May to August is the comfortable window. The lake fell to 1 percent of capacity in January 2023 and stood at 35.78 percent of usable storage on 19 October 2026, still dropping.
What to do
Walk the path from the Zuva service station to the dam wall viewpoint and information centre, with its small exhibition and curio sellers outside. The figure on the carved walking sticks is Nyaminyami, the snake-bodied river god the Tonga say sent the floods that washed away much of the half-built dam, and will one day finish the job. The wall is 128 m high and 579 m long, and the Queen Mother opened it on 17 May 1960.
Up at Kariba Heights, the hilltop suburb with the views, are St Barbara’s church and the Operation Noah monument: from 1958 to 1964 Rupert Fothergill’s teams rescued over 6,000 animals from the rising water and moved most of them to Matusadona.
Houseboats go out for up to five days. Tigerfish and bream are the catch. Matusadona, 1,470 km² between the Ume and Sanyati rivers, is a boat ride from Lake Harvest or Chawara harbour. In town the ZPC Social Club does lunch on a terrace with a pool and a lake view.
Good to know
The town is very hilly. Wild animals roam the roads after dark, so do not walk at night. Do not swim in the lake: the CDC lists schistosomiasis for Zimbabwe. The Zambezi valley is malaria country all year, not just November to June.
Bring US dollar cash in small notes; some places will not take cards and change is rarely available. Expect power cuts, long ones sometimes. On 11 August 2026 the ferry Mbuya Nehanda capsized on the Kariba to Chalala run, killing dozens of people (reported death tolls range from 68 to 97); stick to established operators and ask about life jackets. The travel essentials guide has the rest.
History and culture
Kariba is a company town that outlived its job. The Italian contractors who blocked the Zambezi with a 128 m concrete arch between 1955 and 1959 needed somewhere to put 7,000 workers, so a town went up on the hills above the gorge, and when the dam was finished the town stayed to run the power station and, later, the houseboats. The lake behind the wall drowned the homeland of the Tonga and lit two colonies. Elephants still walk through the suburbs, and the dam wall, the chapel on the Heights and the river god on the curio sticks all tell the same story if you know what to look for.
- Before 1955
The gorge and the valley floor above it were Tonga country. The Tonga had lived in the Zambezi valley for centuries in peaceful seclusion, with little contact with people from elsewhere, and their river god Nyaminyami, a snake with a fish's head, was believed to live in the river. The name Kariba is said to come from kariva or karinga, a word meaning trap, after a rock jutting out of the gorge where the wall now stands. source
- 1953 to 1959
The dam was built on the orders of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the colonial union of today's Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. Northern Rhodesia had decided in 1953 on a dam on the Kafue River, but Southern Rhodesia, the richest of the three, objected and insisted on Kariba. A team led by the French engineer André Coyne designed it, and Cogefar-Impresit of Italy built it between 1955 and 1959. source
- 1955 to 1960
The workforce peaked at seven thousand in 1957. The Tonga took the setbacks on the works as the doing of Nyaminyami. On 20 February 1959 a platform in a shaft to the power station collapsed and killed 17 workers, and the wall was finished in June 1959. source
- 1950s to 2002
About 57,000 Tonga living along the Zambezi on both banks were moved off the valley floor to make way for the lake, fishing people resettled on land they had to learn to farm. The anthropologist Thayer Scudder, who has studied them since the late 1950s, says most are still development refugees, and the writer Jacques Leslie called Kariba the worst dam resettlement disaster in African history. In 2002 the displaced people formed the Basilwizi Trust to speak for themselves. source
- 1958 to 1964
As the water rose, game ranger Rupert Fothergill and two colleagues from the Southern Rhodesia Game Department, with trackers and a crew of volunteers, pulled more than 6,000 animals off the shrinking islands in what became Operation Noah (a Zambian team saved about 2,000 more). Fothergill and his vets pioneered tranquilliser darts on buffalo and rhino, the animals were floated out on rafts of 44 gallon drums strapped together, and black mambas were noosed with an adapted fishing rod and dropped into pillowcases. Forty-three rhinos were among the saved; in 1959 alone 529 animals were lost. Many went to what is now Matusadona. source
- 1966 to 1979
Kariba was caught up in the liberation war, which the guerrillas called the Second Chimurenga (Chimurenga is a Shona word for a revolutionary struggle). Rhodesia's white minority government had declared independence from Britain on 11 November 1965. On 3 September 1978 a ZIPRA missile brought down Air Rhodesia Flight 825 about five minutes after take-off from Kariba; 38 died in the crash and ten survivors were rounded up and shot. On 12 February 1979 ZIPRA shot down a second Viscount, Flight 827, and this time nobody survived. source
- 2018 to 2023
The dam was first run by the Central African Power Corporation and now belongs to the Zambezi River Authority, owned equally by Zimbabwe and Zambia. Zimbabwe's Kariba South power station grew from 750 MW to 1,050 MW in 2018 when Sinohydro added two turbines, helped by a US$319 million loan from China. A year later drought left the lake near empty, and in 2023 it fell to just 1 percent. source
- 11 August 2026
The government ferry Mbuya Nehanda, with a limit of 90 passengers and carrying about 180 plus cargo, sailed from Kariba for a remote village about 50 km away by water and more than 400 km by road, after weather officials had advised that sailing be suspended. About half an hour out, water flooded the engine compartment and the bilge pump, she turned broadside to the waves and capsized near Long Island. At least 94 people died, a one-month-old child among them, and 77 were rescued, with a boat coming out from Tashinga. It is the deadliest public transport disaster in Zimbabwe's history, and an official inquest is to examine the vessel and the crew's decisions. source
- Who lives here
- Kariba Urban District counted 27,910 people in nine wards at the 2022 census, and Kariba Rural District behind it another 45,774. Women outnumber men in the town, 14,223 to 13,687, and a third of the people live in a single ward, ward 2, with 9,673. source
- The Tonga and tchitonga
- The Tonga are the people of the valley. Since the dam they have lived along the lakeshore from Chirundu to Victoria Falls, mostly around Binga and Kariba, up to 300,000 of them in Zimbabwe, many of them subsistence farmers who also fish the Zambezi. Their language is called tchitonga on this side of the border; about 137,000 speak it in Zimbabwe against 1.38 million in Zambia. In the 1800s the Ndebele regarded them as a very peaceful people. source
- Nyaminyami
- You will meet the river god before you meet the lake: he is on the carved walking sticks in every curio shop, a snake's body with a fish's head. The Tonga say he lived upstream with his wife on the Zambian shore and the dam now keeps them apart, so when he turns back the earth around Kariba shakes. They blamed him for the floods of 1957 and 1958, the second rated a once in a thousand years event that took out the coffer dam and the access bridge and drowned eleven workers. The Nyaminyami Festivals are held every September. source
- Kapenta
- Kapenta is the small sardine you see drying in the sun along the shore. The Zambian government put 360,000 Lake Tanganyika sardines into the lake in 1967 and 1968, commercial fishing began in 1974, and the annual catch now runs to 20,000 to 30,000 tonnes. Tigerfish numbers rose on the back of them; by 1971 sardines made up as much as 70 percent of their diet. source
- Living with elephants
- Herds of up to 80 elephants and resident buffalo wander through the town, drivers are asked to stay under 60 km/h and wildlife has right of way; the 2014 half marathon was held up by elephants on the course. Mahombekombe and Nyamhunga, at opposite ends of town, are the two small commercial centres with the supermarkets, and the Heights, a hill about 600 m above the lake, have the lookout, the craft stalls and the chapel. The half marathon runs over the Heroes weekend in August and the Kariba Tiger Tournament, a fishing event based at Charara, in late October. source
For American visitors: The classic long-term study of the Kariba resettlement is American work. In 1956 the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute sent Elizabeth Colson, born in Hewitt, Minnesota, with a Radcliffe doctorate and later a Berkeley professor, to record what the dam would do to the Gwembe Tonga. Her 1971 report, The Social Consequences of Resettlement, described unrest, resentment of the government and local leaders who lost standing for backing the move. She died in Monze, Zambia, in August 2016, aged 99. source
For American visitors: Colson's partner in that study was Thayer Scudder, born in Connecticut in 1930, who became an anthropology professor at Caltech and a commissioner on the World Commission on Dams. Jacques Leslie's 2005 book Deep Water, about dams and the people they displace, gives about a third of its pages to him. source
For American visitors: Operation Noah was covered in the American press as it happened: Life wrote it up on 29 June 1959, and Time described the rescue as the work of three white game wardens and eight native trackers, which is roughly how it started before the volunteers arrived. source
Main sights in Kariba
7- Kariba Dam wall and the Observation Point
Leave your passport or other ID at the customs and immigration post and you can walk down onto the wall itself, 128 m high. The Observation Point above it has a carved stone statue of Nyaminyami, an information centre with photographs of the 1950s construction and the Tonga story, and craft stalls in the car park selling carved walking sticks and seed necklaces. Canoe trips on the Zambezi start below the wall.
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Lake Kariba - Santa Barbara Chapel, Kariba Heights
The Italian workers' memorial to the 86 men who died building the dam and power station, at the top of Kariba Heights about 250 m from the viewpoint, entrance on Heights Drive. It is open-air, built in the shape of a coffer dam, and dedicated to Santa Barbara, patron saint of miners and dam builders; a marble plaque carries the names and three bells hang in the cement tower. A custodian unlocks it for visitors, and the views over the lake are fine.
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Santa Barbara Chapel, Kariba - Operation Noah Memorial
At the top of Kariba Heights, looking over the lake that made the rescue necessary. Go after reading about Starvation Island, the 5,000 acres where 200 buffalo, 11 rhino, four elephants and 11 lions were trapped as the water rose; 200 animals were eventually got off and many of the rest died.
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Operation Noah Memorial - Matusadona National Park
Across the eastern basin, 1,470 km² between the Ume and Sanyati rivers, reached by boat from Lake Harvest or Chawara harbour or by road from Karoi on the Binga road. Many of Operation Noah's animals were let go here. Since African Parks signed a 20-year mandate with ZimParks in 2019 the ranger force has grown to 90, 223 zebra were brought in during 2021, a 2020 aerial count found about 700 elephants and 1,000 hippo, and tigerfish spawned in the Sanyati Gorge without illegal nets in 2022 and 2023 for the first time in over 25 years. See [Matusadona](/zimbabwe/matusadona-national-park/) and [Bumi Hills](/zimbabwe/bumi-hills/).
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Matusadona National Park, African Parks in partnership with ZimParks - Nyanyana and the Lake Kariba Recreational Park
The Nyanyana camp, on the lakeshore 28 km from town and 6 km of dirt off the road from Makuti: self-catering lodges at the mouth of the Nyanyana River where hippos often graze at night, twenty campsites within 100 m of the water, and a slipway for your own boat unless the lake is very low. The lake has over forty fish species and 102 islands; bring your own tackle.
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Lake Kariba Recreational Park - A houseboat on the lake
The thing Kariba is for. A crewed boat moves along the shore, a tender takes you out at sunrise for fishing or game viewing up the tributaries, you rest through the midday heat while the boat moves on, and dinner is often the fish you caught. Longer charters reach the Matusadona shore, where walks need a professional guide or an armed ranger. Nobody goes ashore alone and nobody swims: crocodiles gather at the landing points.
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Kariba houseboat charters - Kariba Ferries to Mlibizi
The car ferry runs the length of the lake, leaving Andora Harbour at 10:30 and docking at [Mlibizi](/zimbabwe/mlibizi/) at the western end at around 07:00 the next morning, so you and your car skip the long drive round to the Victoria Falls side.
Kariba Ferries, The voyage
Did you know?
- The weight of the lake set off the largest earthquake ever recorded in Zimbabwe, a magnitude 6.3 in September 1963, about five weeks after the water reached its maximum level. The area had very little seismic activity before the dam; since then it has produced more than 2,000 tremors, about 1,000 of them above magnitude 4, and they are still felt in town, as with the magnitude 4.3 on 2 August 2022. source
- The first bell of the Santa Barbara chapel was cast in 1957 by an Italian dam worker, Edmondo Fermi, and his mates in their own time from scrap machinery. Its inscription, in Italian, records that Edmondo built a bell and little Angela got better: his young daughter had recovered from a serious illness. source
- In July 1969 B. A. Gibson found a bone on an unnamed island west of Bumi Hills, informally called Island 126/127. It turned out to be Vulcanodon karibaensis, named by Michael Raath in 1972, once thought the earliest known sauropod and still one of the most primitive: a plant eater on four column-like legs, 6.5 to 11 m long, from the Early Jurassic. The bones are in the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. source
- The lakeshore is still giving up dinosaurs. Musango matusadonaensis, a 4.5 m two-legged relative of the sauropods that lived about 210 million years ago, was spotted eroding out of rocks a few metres above the water on Spurwing Island in 2018 and named in July 2026, the fifth dinosaur named from Zimbabwe and the second from the Kariba shore after Musankwa in 2024. source
- On 14 October 2026 the lake stood at 480.65 m above sea level, 36.68 percent of its usable storage. The Zambezi River Authority has cut the water for power generation at Kariba for 2027 to 23 billion cubic metres from 36 this year, citing strong El Niño conditions, and expects the lake to hold about 9 percent of live storage by the end of 2027. source
- The dam controls 90 percent of the Zambezi's runoff. Decades of water pouring over the spillway carved a vast crater below the wall that has undercut its foundations; engineers warned in 2014 that failure was possible, and the Zambezi River Authority put 3.5 million lives at risk. Rehabilitation, financed by the EU, the World Bank, the Swedish government and the African Development Bank, has been under way since 2017. source
Checked 19 October 2026.
Wildlife you might see
13- very likelyElephantThe town sits in a wildlife corridor and elephants walk the roads through the inhabited parts of town by day and by night. Across the lake, Matusadona is where most houseboats head, and Expert Africa's travellers report elephant there on every trip. All yearsource
- very likelyHippoThe lake shore, Matusadona above all. Expert Africa's travellers report hippo on every Matusadona trip. All yearsource
- very likelyNile crocodileEvery stretch of shoreline, the harbours included. The lake has a very large crocodile population, which is why nobody swims. All yearsource
- very likelyChacma baboonIn town, where baboons are often seen wandering the streets alongside elephants and zebra. All yearsource
- very likelyAfrican fish eagle, cormorants and other water birdsEvery shoreline. Fish eagles, cormorants and other water birds patrol the water's edge. All yearsource
- very likelyTigerfishAnywhere on the lake. The tournament in October is based around the lodges at Charara. Tigerfish run best from September to December, with September and October the strongest months. March and April are a second, smaller peak, and June to August give fewer but bigger fishsource
- likelyPlains zebraIn and around town, where they often wander through. Kariba Recreational Park, entered at Nyanyana Gate, has self-drive game viewing along the lakeshore. All yearsource
- likelyCape buffaloMatusadona, across the lake, where buffalo frequent the area. Seen on about three trips in foursource
- likelyLionThe Matusadona side of the lake, where Expert Africa's travellers see them on a little over half of tripssource
- possibleSpotted hyenaMatusadona, on about one trip in foursource
- rareLeopardMatusadona. About one trip in fivesource
- rareBlack rhinoMatusadona, where tracking them is possible. Expert Africa's travellers see one on about a fifth of tripssource
- rareAfrican wild dogMatusadona. About one trip in fivesource
Likelihood is for a normal visit of two or three days, from the sources linked. Nothing is guaranteed in the wild.
Staying safe in Kariba
- Malaria
- Kariba is in the Zambezi valley, and the UK's TravelHealthPro puts the valley in its all-year malaria band, not the November to June band that covers the rest of the country below 1,200 m. The tablets it names are atovaquone with proguanil, doxycycline or mefloquine. Start them before you arrive and keep taking them after you leave. source
- Crocodiles and the shoreline
- Nobody should swim in Lake Kariba. The crocodile population is very large, so stand well back from the water when you fish or walk along the shore. source
- Bilharzia
- Even where there were no crocodiles the lake would be out of bounds. Zimbabwe has schistosomiasis (bilharzia), and the UK advice is not to wade, swim or bathe in any fresh water. Repellent and towelling off do not protect you. A chlorinated pool is fine. If you did get in the water, ask for a bilharzia test when you get home. source
- Boats and weather
- In August 2026 a ferry capsized on the lake and 97 people died. When the tiger fishing tournament opened at Charara on 7 October 2026 the Ministry of Transport used the ceremony to repeat the rules: a registered vessel, a qualified captain, a correct load, the safety gear on board, a life jacket on, and an eye on the weather, which changes on open water. Book houseboats and transfers with established operators, ask where the life jackets are, and do not argue when a skipper waits out the wind. source
- Animals in town
- Elephants walk the suburbs of Kariba, and ZimParks' advice is not to walk at night. Five people were trampled to death by elephants in the town in 2019, ZimParks says most attacks happen at midnight, and the Baobab, Garikai and Batonga areas are where people have been hurt. In daylight give an elephant the whole road and wait for it to move off. Baboons in Mahombekombe steal bread from the shops, so keep food out of sight. source
- The road in
- The UK Foreign Office rates driving standards in Zimbabwe as very poor and lists deep potholes, vehicles without lights, stray livestock and pedestrians on the road. Do not drive outside the main towns after dark. Stop at every roadblock and toll gate, keep copies of your passport photo page and visa in the car, and get a receipt for any fine. Fuel is sometimes unavailable, so fill up when you can and carry cash in case your card is not accepted. source
Tips from travellers
- Book a houseboat for four nights at the least, five if you can. Two nights is too short: the lake is big enough that you can motor for half a day to get somewhere, and a short hire is spent travelling. In season, book ahead. several sources
- Houseboats are priced per day for the boat, and fuel, food and park levies are usually billed on top, so ask for the all-in figure before you compare quotes. Bigger groups pay less per head. People who have done it say the deals at the harbour beat the ones arranged from abroad, as long as you are not trying that on a public holiday weekend when the boats may be taken. Chawara Harbour, about 15 km out of town with the turn-off just after the airfield on the road up from Makuti, is more relaxed and less touristy than Marineland. several sources
- Chawara Harbour sells drinks, ice, biltong, outboard and engine oil, diesel, petrol and kapenta for bait. When the lake is low, some boats leave from Marineland instead, so check which harbour yours uses. Mosquito nets are standard on the boats. one source
- You can see the dam wall from the Observation Point. To walk on the wall itself get a visitor pass from Zimbabwe Customs and Immigration and leave your passport or ID with them, then drive down to the marked parking and walk onto the wall. Some of the bigger hotels run guided tours. Up at Kariba Heights the Operation Noah monument, the craft market and the round chapel of Santa Barbara, built by the Italian engineers in memory of the workers who died on the wall, are a drive or a long hard walk from town; if the chapel gate is locked the caretaker will open it. one source
- If you fish, come in September or October, when the tigerfish are at their best and the Kariba International Tiger Fish Tournament comes to Charara in the October new moon period. The tournament has been catch and release since 2022, with fish measured through the Keepnet app, and the National Anglers Union of Zimbabwe hosts it. Expect daytime highs above 35°C in October and coloured water once the rains start in November. one source
- Kariba Ferries will take you and your car the length of the lake, about 22 hours, which cuts more than 1,250 km of driving off a Kariba to Victoria Falls trip and saves at least one night in a hotel. Choose a date and make a provisional booking well ahead, and confirm it before you commit to the rest of the route. one source
Checked 19 October 2026. Conditions change, so confirm with the park or venue before you go.
Bananas on the weed mats and a city of lights on Lake Kariba
In 1960 people on the new lake kept seeing banana plants. They stood up out of floating mats of fern, well grown. The botanist A. S. Boughey, at the University College in Salisbury, worked out that they had sprung from suckers floating up out of the Tonga gardens drowned below. Luffa vines from the same fields were seeding themselves on the mats too. None of the bananas ever fruited, and they did not come back in later years.
The fern that came over the Falls
The dam was closed on 2 December 1958. By May 1959 the first reports of weed were coming in. It was a South American water fern that botanists then called Salvinia auriculata (it is now known as Salvinia molesta, and commonly as Kariba weed, after this lake), and it had been sitting quietly in backwaters of the Zambezi above Victoria Falls, as far up as Kazungula, for at least ten years. The Cape Town botanist E. A. Schelpe thought the Kariba plants had been carried over the Falls from there. This time there was a still lake waiting below the gorges.
The numbers are startling. Schelpe flew over the lake in April 1960 and sketched about 75 square miles of mats. A year later reports put it at over 200. Boughey reckoned the weed settled at roughly a tenth of the whole surface. The prevailing wind blows from the east north-east on almost every day of the year, and it shoved the mats into ridges up to two metres thick. One wind-driven mat caught in the crown of a half-drowned tree snapped the trunk. Under a thick mat in the Zongwe estuary the water had almost no oxygen left in it.
Sinazongwe, the biggest harbour on the Zambian shore, could hardly be reached by boat for two years. A boom across the mouth of the gorge kept the weed out of the turbine intakes. The officials of the Lake Kariba Co-ordinating Committee worked through public suggestions for using it, from food for people to plastic ash-trays. Boughey also noted that water hyacinth had not yet turned up, though a very careful watch was being kept for it. It came in the end. In 2023 a writer for Africa Geographic on the way to Matusadona watched a big crocodile slide into deeper water in a Kariba inlet with hyacinth draped over it and a pale purple flower perched above one eye.
Why the dead trees are still standing
Mopane was the dominant tree on the flatter, lower ground of the valley. The fishing grounds were stripped of all woody growth, at serious cost, down to a few centimetres above the ground, so the weed had nothing to catch on. Elsewhere the trees went under where they stood, crowns half out of the water. Those crowns damped the waves and gave the fern its nurseries, and the drowned vegetation rotted into a thick, fertile layer on the lake bed.
Those bare grey trunks against the evening sky are what nearly every Kariba sunset picture is built around. One couple who went in 2025 wrote that the sunsets were probably the best they had seen in Africa, which is a big claim on a continent with the Kalahari in it. Fish eagles and cormorants work the shoreline, and one specialist operator calls the fish eagle population very healthy.
A city that switches off at full moon
After dark the lake fills with lights. These are the kapenta rigs, which go out at night, hang LED or kerosene lamps over the water to draw the little sardines up and lift them in a dip net about six metres across. At a 2006 meeting of the two countries, Zimbabwe reported 295 rigs belonging to 98 companies and employing more than 3,000 people, though the 2005 catch was down by more than half on 1994. Crocodiles tear the nets, which the report listed among the industry’s problems alongside fuel shortages.
A sound recording made on the Zambian shore at Sinazongwe in 2018 describes the rigs heading out for the night, each running at least two generators (one to lift the net, one to move the rig), and says that from a distance the fleet looks like a city. It also explains the dark week: the rigs are out about three weeks in four, and fishing is not allowed for about a week around the full moon.
The rest of the night noise is animal. Hippos often graze round the lodges at Nyanyana at night. On many evenings lions can be heard roaring between territorial prides, and on hot nights houseboat guests sleep out on the open top deck. The Africa Geographic writer, camped on that 2023 Matusadona trip, heard hippos grunting in the dark and the lions roaring at the full moon.
The grass that comes and goes with the water
The lake is not a fixed shoreline. Where the water rises and falls it leaves nutrients on the bank, and a band of torpedo grass, Panicum repens, grows there, and buffalo, waterbuck, zebra and impala follow it down, with the predators behind them. Matusadona once had more than 100 lions living off those buffalo in an area of about 450 km². When the water rose and drowned the grazing, the buffalo dropped and the lions with them; a 2004 study estimated 28.
Late afternoon is the time to be on a boat, when animals come down to drink and wallow in the shallows. Travellers who send sighting reports to one specialist operator say they saw elephant and hippo every time on the Matusadona side, buffalo on most trips and lion on just over half, while black rhino turned up for one visitor in five. Schelpe, on his 1960 survey, saw Panicum repens creeping into the weed mats along with sedges. Sixty-odd years on it is the same grass doing the feeding.
Quick answers
What animals can you see in Kariba?
Most visitors see elephant, hippo, nile crocodile, chacma baboon, african fish eagle, cormorants, other water birds and tigerfish. You have a good chance of seeing plains zebra, cape buffalo and lion. Leopard, black rhino and african wild dog are there but rarely seen.
Guides for Kariba
Map of Kariba
See every place on this map as a list