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In the 1960s, Gorongosa was a "premier safari destination", its extraordinary landscape and wildlife attracting film stars such as John Wayne and Gregory Peck.
Then civil war erupted in Mozambique, said David Pilling in the Financial Times, and by the 2000s the big animals in this national park were gone (many of them killed for bushmeat), and the land here was littered with unexploded mines. What has happened to it since, however, is little short of a miracle – a near-complete recovery in less than two decades, widely regarded as one of the world's most triumphant examples of "biodiversity repair".
Today, Gorongosa is worthy of its old reputation as "Africa's Eden" once more. Gorongosa's rebirth has been driven by Greg Carr, an American philanthropist who signed a 20-year co-management agreement with Mozambique's government in 2008. Since then, he has invested more than $100m in the park, and "corralled" more from other donors, giving it an annual budget of $25 million (though some of that is now under threat owing to Elon Musk's recent cuts to USAID). Carr's "radical" idea has been to "stop poaching with jobs, not guns". Much of the money goes into stimulating development in the surrounding area, which is home to 200,000 people. For example, Gorongosa employs 1,800 people in jobs from furniture making to midwifery, and has built and staffed 100 primary schools.
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As we head out of camp on my first day, the "vast and mysterious" park unfolds in all its "misty glory". Over eight days, we see fever-tree forests, alluvial floodplains, rare sand forests, and palm forests with a "surprisingly Southeast Asian feel", as well as an astonishing array of wildlife. There are some great night drives, but particularly "spectacular" are the walking safaris, on which we come across lions and – most dramatically – a pack of wild dogs working themselves into a collective "frenzy" before loping off into the "fading light" to hunt.
