Saiwa Swamp

This rarely visited and smallest National Park Saiwa Swamp is a real treat – as long as you’re not here for the Big Five, this is a chance to tick off some real safari highlights.A veritable haven for nature lovers, the Saiwa Swamp National Park is a forested paradise filled with exotic flowers, trees and birds. It is also the habitat of the rare and endangered semi-aquatic Sitatunga antelope and as a preserve for the rare De Brazza’s monkey. Within this tropical wetlands and mosaic of riverine forest, sedges and acacia woodlands, with fringing dense rushes and grass bedsBird life is abundant. Water birds include the lesser jacana, grey heron and the African black duck while the forest shelters the Narina trogons, the collared and orange-tufted sunbird, the yellow bishop, Hatlaub’s marsh widow bird and the Noisy Ross’s turacos which are difficult to miss. The park is only accessible by foot and walking trails skirt the swamp, duckboards go right across it, and there are some rickety observation towers.