Building in the Zambezi Valley is not for the faint hearted. With two exciting projects coming to fruition for the 2025 season – an extension to the pan hide and a new room – we take a deep dive into what it takes to build in the bush.
Rod Huck, our General Manager and a shareholder, has been integrally involved in every aspect of the camp’s construction, from the very beginning. We sat down with him for a glimpse into what’s involved in building a sustainable and unique camp in the wilds of Mana Pools National Park in Zimbabwe.
Eight rooms with a view
If you’ve visited Kavinga, you’ll know that our rooms are quite different compared to a traditional safari camp. “We wanted to create a space that is comfortable, accentuates the raw beauty of the wilderness, and provides the best possible experience of nature,” Rod explains.
Built on tall steel frames on the edge of a cliff, our elevated rooms offer stunning panoramas over the main pan, Ruckomechi riverbed and Zambezi escarpment. This means guests can enjoy all the wildlife action from the comfort of their room. “We don’t want our presence to disrupt the animals,” says Rod. “And I think we’ve been successful. Lion often nap under the rooms, and several guests have been woken at night to the sounds of hyena running beneath them!”
Our newest room, ‘room 8’, has one key, rather exciting difference compared to the others. Standing 3.5m high, guests access it via a raised walkway starting near room 7. “Game, particularly elephants, frequent the area between these two rooms, so we’re hoping the elevated pathway will allow them to keep using it,” explains Rod.
We chose steel as our primary construction material instead of wood, because it allieviates the challenge posed by termites. However, Rod says steel comes with its own challenges: “Welding with steel in the extreme heat of the Zambezi valley can be tricky; often the sun makes it too hot to pick up.”
A ‘hideful’ of engineering ingenuity
Of all the structures at Kavinga, Rod is proudest of the two hides, particularly in terms of the design and engineering required to get them just right: “Guests really love the hides. They allow for a truly immersive wildlife experience, providing a safe yet intimate space to observe the animals up close in their natural habitat.”
And we’re not the only ones who think our hides are great. WildEyeSA recently voted Kavinga as one of their top three photographic hide destinations on the African continent. 😊
Ahead of the 2025 season, we’ve been hard at work extending the pan hide. It now offers more ‘front row’ seats for guests to enjoy the sights and sounds of the bush up close.
Rod credits Clyde Elgar, one of our shareholders, for the inspiration behind the hides. “Clyde’s passion for photography pushed us to go beyond what a typical safari camp offers. He wanted to create a space where guests could capture the perfect image without disturbing the wildlife, and that vision became central to Kavinga’s design.”
Remote construction challenges
Of course, building in the wilds of Mana Pools National Park comes with its own unique set of challenges.
For example, supplies can often take days to arrive, coming from Harare or even as far away as Johannesburg. Rod believes the key to building success in remote locations is meticulous preparation: “If you forget something, there’s no shop nearby, and sometimes no way to get it for weeks. So we always order more than we think we’ll need, and ensure everything is in place before we start.”
However, no matter how prepared you are, there’ll always be times when things don’t go to plan. Fortunately, that’s when Rod’s creative problem-solving abilities and resourcefulness really shine.
Want to hear a good story about what happens when things go awry? Ask about the pool next time you’re in camp!
It can also sometimes be challenging to find people with the right skills who are willing to spend extended periods building in a difficult location, often in a less-than-ideal climate.
“We’re lucky to have several long-term relationships with building partners we can trust. Their expertise and dedication over the years have been fundamental to our success,” says Rod. “Agristructures has played a vital role developing our steelworks from the get-go. Elliot and his team from Big Time Builders helped build our bird hide in 2024 and the pan hide extension in early 2025.”
Wildlife encounters while building
Given Kavinga’s wild location, our construction team has its fair share of wildlife encounters. One of Rod’s more memorable moments involved an impala that jumped into a nearly finished septic tank while being chased by wild dogs. “We set up a ramp to help the impala get out of the tank, but it wouldn’t use it. In a moment of quick thinking, one of the team grabbed a fertilizer bag. The rustling startled the impala into running up the ramp to safety. However, the sound also startled a nearby elephant, who promptly charged us! Fortunately, the same team member waved the bag and the elephant turned and trumpeted off.”
It’s moments like this that really bring home the reality of working in the wild.
Visit us for an unforgettable safari experience
From setting out our initial vision for the camp, to building the pool on the side of the cliff and the underground bird hide and, more recently, expanding the pan hide and building the raised walkway to the new room, our team continues to improve the Kavinga experience for the benefit of our guests, while keeping the preservation of the wild front of mind.
Building in the bush requires patience, ingenuity, and a deep understanding of the environment. Thanks to the team’s effort our camp has become a place where guests can connect with the wild in comfort, in an unforgettably special way.
We look forward to sharing Kavinga with you soon.