Signor Charles Perreira knows the layout of Gorongosa National Park better than anyone. He has been a game scout there since 1972. In the late '70s he had to join the government Frelimo forces in order to protect the park against Renamo resistance fighters intent on poaching elephant ivory to fund their guerrilla-style war against the so-called legitimate government. Captain Rui Antonio Francisco fought on the opposite side and was responsible for lugging ivory across the border to sell to white Rhodesians/Zimbabweans. By a quirk of fate the owners of a fantastic new bush camp employed both these men at the outset of a project designed to restore a once great animal haven. They have become big amigos, sharing a tent and ciggies, and all their stories of the past are now coming out.
Mozambique is the fastest growing economy in Africa, and the restoration of Gorongosa with the help of Gregg Carr’s innovative foundation and others' dedication is receiving lots of attention. Perreira and Rui are now working together on this regeneration project; it's maybe a little fanciful to claim that their reconciliation is all down to the restorative powers of nature, but it certainly makes an uplifting story!
In the 1960s more people visited this park than the Kruger in South Africa. There is some wonderful footage shot in 1963 which you can see at the park headquarters of a brand new Mercedes saloon being driven around on rather unusually smooth tracks! The place is teeming with game: there may be only thirty or so lions remaining (I saw two of them recently) of the five hundred which once roamed the plain, but the bio-diversity here is superb with no fewer than eighteen species of antelope. As there's only one authentic bush camp in the park, you’ll have the place to yourselves, if you make the journey here to the bottom of the Great African Rift Valley.
