Boat Safaris in Tanzania
Wildlife viewing from the water, above all on the Rufiji River and its lakes in Nyerere and on the Wami at Saadani. It gives a different angle on hippo, crocodile and waterbirds than a vehicle can.
A boat safari is wildlife viewing from a small motorboat on a river, lake or estuary, and it changes how animals behave towards the observer: nothing has ever threatened them from the water, so the boat is not read as a threat. It also puts the camera at eye level with its subjects. Tanzania tariffs boating in a specific set of parks, headed by the Rufiji in Nyerere, and explicitly not in several places travellers assume. This guide covers where it runs, what the water shows, and how hippo and crocodile are watched safely.
Safaris That Include Boat Safaris
Photograph by Harvey Barrison from Massapequa, NY, USA, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
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7 Days Northern Circuit Tanzania Safari
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See all 8 safaris that include boat safaris
Boat Safaris Guide in Tanzania
What a boat safari is, and why the water changes the animal
A boat safari is wildlife viewing from a small motorboat on a river, a lake or an estuary inside a protected area. It is the third mode of safari alongside the vehicle and the walk, and it is the one that most changes how animals behave towards the observer.
Animals that watch a vehicle warily will often ignore a boat completely. An elephant drinking at a riverbank will lift its head at an engine on the track and carry on drinking with a boat forty metres away on the water. Waterbuck and bushbuck that would move off from a walking group stay put. The reason is simple: nothing has ever threatened them from the river, so the boat is not read as a predator.
The other difference is the angle. A boat puts the camera at water level, which is roughly the eye level of most of the animals being photographed, and this produces images that a vehicle cannot. It also puts the observer below the bank, so the view up into the riverine forest is different from anything a road offers.
Boat safaris usually run in the early morning or the last two hours of light, the same hours as a game drive, and for the same reason.
Where boat safaris run in Tanzania
Boating is not available everywhere and the list is shorter than the coastline suggests. TANAPA's published tariff sets a boating safari fee for Nyerere, Burigi-Chato, Rumanyika-Karagwe, Mahale Mountains, Rubondo Island, Gombe and Saadani National Parks, with separate provision for Ugalla River and Kigosi and for excursions at Saanane Island. A tariffed activity is one charged for in its own right rather than covered by park entry, a distinction worked through in the published fees and what an operator adds on top of them.
That list is wider than most trip planning assumes, and it is also narrower in an important way. Several of the most famous water features on the safari circuits are not boating venues at all. There are no boat safaris on the Serengeti's rivers, none on Lake Manyara, and none at Katavi, where the extraordinary dry-season hippo concentrations are watched from a vehicle or on foot as the rivers shrink.
Where a park permits canoeing rather than or as well as motorboats, that is covered separately in the canoe safari guide. Ocean sailing, dhow trips and coastal cruises belong to the coast, and sit outside this guide entirely.
The Rufiji, in Nyerere National Park
Nyerere is the country's boat safari destination and the reason is the Rufiji. Tanzania's largest river runs through the north of the park, slow and wide, and it has thrown off a series of oxbow lakes across its floodplain. TANAPA describes game viewing by boat there as popular either on the river itself or around the small lakes that border it.
The lakes are the better product. They are fringed with borassus and doum palm, they hold very large populations of hippo and crocodile, and in the dry season they act as a magnet for everything else. Elephant come down to drink, buffalo stand in the shallows, waterbuck graze the margins and the birdlife along the palm fringe is continuous.
A Rufiji boat morning typically runs two to three hours, working the channels between lakes where the water is high enough, and it pairs naturally with a game drive on the same day. It also pairs with a walk: Nyerere offers guided walking safaris with fly camps, so a three-night stay can use all three modes, as set out in the walking safari guide.
Water level governs everything, and which months are dry depends on where in the country you are: the boating parks of the south and west keep a later, longer dry season than the northern circuit. Late in the dry season some channels close and the boats are confined to the main river and the larger lakes. After heavy rain the river runs fast and brown and the lakes spread.
Saadani and the Wami River
Saadani is the only national park in East Africa where big game country meets an Indian Ocean beach, and its boat safari is on the Wami River, which meanders through mangrove forest in the south of the park. TANAPA notes that the Wami can be enjoyed by boat or canoe, and that both hippo and crocodile are present along with a great many birds.
A Wami trip is a different landscape from the Rufiji: tidal, mangrove-lined, narrower, with the river mouth opening to the sea. Mangrove kingfishers, herons, fish eagles and, at the estuary, waders and terns. Colobus and vervet work the canopy on the banks. The tidal influence means departure times follow the water rather than the clock.
Saadani is close enough to Dar es Salaam and to Zanzibar to be reached easily, which makes a boat safari there one of the few genuinely short additions to a beach trip.
Rubondo Island and the papyrus
Rubondo is a forested island in Lake Victoria and boating along its rocky shoreline is one of its key activities. Sandy bays overhung by large forest trees alternate with rock, and on one side of the island there is a substantial papyrus swamp.
The papyrus is the reason to take the boat. It is a first-class waterbird habitat and TANAPA's own recommendation is an afternoon and evening among the papyrus for anyone interested in birds. Nearly 400 species have been recorded on the island, and the density of African fish eagles is described by TANAPA as the highest anywhere, with the call a constant background sound. Sitatunga, the swamp-adapted antelope that is difficult to see anywhere else, lives in the papyrus stands and is most often glimpsed from the water.
Boating safaris at Rubondo run in an open motorboat or in a visitor's own canoe. The island's other draws include the introduced chimpanzee population covered in the chimpanzee trekking guide, and catch-and-release Nile perch fishing.
Lake Tanganyika: Gombe, Mahale and the boat as transport
On Lake Tanganyika the boat is often the road rather than the activity. Gombe is reached by boat from Kigoma, with bookings made through the park or with private boat operators, and Mahale is accessible by air, road and boat, with camps served by boat transfers from the airstrip along the shore.
Those transfers are worth treating as part of the experience rather than as a chore. The lake is the world's longest freshwater lake and among the deepest and clearest, the forested mountains come straight down to the water, and the shoreline villages, fishing canoes and night-fishing lights are a significant part of what a visit to this corner of Tanzania is. Hippo and crocodile occur along the lake's full extent.
Both parks also tariff boating safaris in their own right, and at Mahale the lake supports kayaking, swimming and snorkelling over the cichlid shallows in the hours when trekking is finished.
Hippo watching
Hippo are the animal most reliably seen on a boat safari and the one that most rewards a long stop. A pod in a Rufiji lake spends the day submerged with ears, eyes and nostrils breaking the surface, surfacing to blow, yawning in threat display, and squabbling with a noise that carries a long way.
What is worth knowing is the behaviour rather than the anatomy. Hippo leave the water at dusk to graze, sometimes several kilometres from it, and return before dawn, which is why the paths up a riverbank are worn into deep parallel grooves. A hippo out of the water in daylight is either very hot, displaced from a pod, or in trouble. Dominant bulls hold stretches of water and the yawning is a measurement of tusk size rather than tiredness.
Hippo are dangerous and the water is where that matters. They are territorial, they are far faster than they look, and a boat that comes between a pod and deep water, or between a cow and a calf, is in the wrong place. Experienced boat guides read the pod from a distance, approach obliquely and keep an exit open, and they will refuse a closer approach when the pod's behaviour says no. That judgement is the main thing a good boat guide is being paid for.
Away from the boating parks, the best hippo watching is from the bank. Katavi's floodplains in the late dry season concentrate hippo in shrinking pools in numbers that are hard to credit, and there are designated hippo pools in the Serengeti and at Lake Manyara where a vehicle can stop and watch.
Crocodile watching
Nile crocodile are present in every one of these waters and are easy to under-appreciate because they do so little. Most of what a boat sees is a large animal lying on a sandbank with its mouth open, which is thermoregulation rather than threat, or a set of eyes and nostrils on the surface.
Scale is the thing photographs miss. TANAPA's own description of the Serengeti's rivers refers to crocodiles of eighteen to twenty feet, and the Grumeti in particular has a reputation for very large animals that spend much of the year in deep pools and time their feeding to the arrival of the migrating herds. The connection between crocodile and migration is set out in the great migration safari guide.
The behaviour worth waiting for is the hunt, which is almost never seen, and the social behaviour around a carcass, which is. Crocodiles cannot chew, so they spin to tear, and a group at a carcass produces the rolling that everyone has seen on film. Nesting females guard banks in the dry season and carry hatchlings to water in their mouths.
The practical rule on a boat is the obvious one. Hands and equipment stay inboard, nobody trails anything in the water, and swimming anywhere hippo or crocodile occur is not a judgement call.
Birds from the water
A boat is the best birding platform on a Tanzanian safari, because it moves slowly, it is quiet, it gets close to the bank and it reaches habitat a vehicle cannot.
The Rufiji lakes produce African skimmer working the surface at dusk, white-fronted bee-eaters in colonies in the sandbanks, giant, pied and malachite kingfishers, open-billed stork, palm-nut vulture in the borassus, and African fish eagle throughout. The Wami adds mangrove species and, at the estuary, waders. Rubondo's papyrus holds swamp specialists that are difficult to reach on foot.
Anyone intending to bird seriously should ask for a boat with a quiet engine and a guide willing to drift. The bird watching guide covers the wider picture.
Practical notes
Boats are generally small open craft with an outboard, a canopy for shade and bench seating. Life jackets should be aboard and worn; if they are not offered, ask.
Sun on water is harsher than sun on land because of reflection, so a hat, high-factor sunscreen and long sleeves matter more than on a drive. Take a dry bag for camera gear. A beanbag or a folded fleece on the gunwale steadies a long lens better than any monopod in a moving boat.
Tsetse concentrate in the thick riverine vegetation along parts of the Rufiji, so avoid blue and black clothing, which attracts them, and carry repellent without expecting it to solve the problem.
Departures are timed to light and, on the Wami, to tide. Morning trips are cooler and better for birds; afternoon trips give warmer light and, on Rubondo, the papyrus at its best.
Common questions about boat safaris
Which park is best for a boat safari?
Nyerere, for the Rufiji River and its oxbow lakes, which combine the largest hippo and crocodile concentrations with elephant and buffalo coming to drink and continuous birdlife. Saadani's Wami River is the best short option, and Rubondo's shoreline and papyrus are the best for birds.
Can a boat safari be done in the Serengeti or at Ngorongoro?
No. Neither is a boating venue. The Serengeti's rivers and the crater's lakes are watched from land, and there are designated hippo pools where vehicles can stop.
Is it safe to be on the water with hippo and crocodile?
Yes, with a competent guide and a sensible boat. The risks are managed by distance, by approach angle, by never coming between a pod and deep water and by keeping hands and equipment inboard. Hippo are the animal to take seriously, and a guide who declines to move closer is doing the job properly.
How long does a boat safari last?
Two to three hours is typical, run either in the early morning or in the last hours of daylight. On the Wami the timing also depends on the tide.
Is a boat safari good for photography?
Very. The water-level angle is close to the eye level of most subjects and cannot be reproduced from a vehicle. The difficulty is stability, which is best solved with a beanbag on the gunwale and a faster shutter speed than feels necessary.
Does the time of year matter?
Yes. Water level determines which channels are navigable and how concentrated the wildlife is along the banks. The dry season concentrates animals on the water and closes some channels; the wet season spreads both the water and the wildlife.
What is the difference between a boat safari and a canoe safari?
A motorboat covers more water and reaches further; a canoe is silent, sits lower and is limited to calm, shallow water. They are permitted on different waters in Tanzania, and the canoe safari guide covers where.