Travel Guide Mkomazi National Park

The name Mkomazi comes from the pare language and means "water source". Wedged between Kenya's Tsavo West National Park on the one hand, and the Southern Pare Mountains and Usambara Mountains on the other, this completely secluded national park is truly superb. It covers an area of 3,245 km2 and is part of the 43,000 km2 Greater Tsavo Ecosystem. It is renowned for its exceptional botanical wealth (90% of the country's varieties, a third of which are strictly endemic). The savannah is fairly arid, and is now home to elephants, buffalo, lions, leopards, lesser kudu, guenuks, oryx... In 1998, four black rhinoceroses, transported from South Africa, were reintroduced to a special 50 km2 reserve, heavily guarded by rangers and electrified fences, designed to protect them from both dangerous escape and possible poacher intrusion. The black rhino sanctuary, still protected, can be visited today.