RFI/Discussion: Best Places to View Wildlife That Are Not Over-Commercialized
Hello everyone,
This was a tough one to sum up in a title — so I’ll endeavor to explain better here. I’m keen to find new places to look for wildlife that provide freedom/flexibility to experience the ecosystems independently. So, I’m looking for places where guides aren’t mandatory and the prices aren’t exorbitant. Ideally, these are places where you can stay reasonably nearby (and not in a luxury “eco” resort for 100s of USD per night) and then walk or drive trails alone.
I’ll give some examples of places I’ve visited that provided what I’m looking for:
Nam Cat Tien, Bi Doup Noi Ba, Cuc Phuong (Vietnam. Most parks in the country offer plenty of freedom, at least in the day – but not the ones along the border with Cambodia/Laos, for example, Yok Don)
Rainforest Discovery Center Sepilok (Malaysian Borneo)
Taman Negara (Malaysia)
Kaeng Krachan (Thailand)
Grand Paradiso (Italy)
All of these have cheap accommodation options just outside the National Parks and cheap entry tickets with no guides required. They all have some spectacular mammals, birds, and reptiles to discover on your own.
Recommended self-drive safari destinations with cheap camping options are also welcome. A couple that I recommend:
Etosha (Namibia)
West Coast NP (South Africa)
It would be really interesting to hear about some of the community’s favorite places and hopefully, my recommendations above might be useful for anyone else who prefers independent trips over tours.
P.S. I’m certainly not against hiring local guides, I just like to spend a long time in a location, and having to hire a guide every time I fancy a walk is not my idea of a good time.
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18 Comments
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Manul
Hi Martin
We travelled independently whenever possible and supported local people on a selective basis.
In our experience it is rather an exception that you have to have a guide and stay somewhere, so the question would be easier to answer the other way round 🙂
But to answer your question: In South America, North America and Europe, we never actually had to have a guide or stay overnight anywhere. It is sometimes difficult to organise or you sometimes have to find out on the spot, but it was always possible for us.
I would not include Etosha on the list because you are not allowed to do night drives alone (or at least were not allowed to back then) and you are not allowed to walk outside the camps at night.
Asia was more difficult (but still possible) in our experience. On the one hand because we didn’t necessarily want to / couldn’t drive ourselves or because it is strictly regulated (for good reasons).
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Steve Babbs
I’ll be watching this carefully. Although I have done a couple of guided trips recently – to see stuff I had no realistic chance of seeing independently – I too much prefer wildlife watching independently and I don’t have the ‘deep pockets’ that a lot of wildlife watchers have.
Looking at your list above, I have spent quite a bit of time at Taman Negara and it was brilliant that you could just wander around as you wanted but I am told that now you cannot go off the boardwalks without a guide.
It’s a long while since I’ve been to most parts of Thailand but you certainly could do the parks there independently.
South Africa is one of the easiest, and cheapest, countries to do independently, which is why I have been four times. Although, for totally understandable reasons, you can’t drive around at night in the reserves although most of them do organised night drives. Although you will spend a lot of time staring at elephants.
In Uganda the reserve entrance fees are expensive, and you need to hire a 4WD, but Lake Mburo, Queen Elizabeth NP and Murchison can be done without a guide with no problem. The rest of the places I visited a had the odd guide and watched from the road. In Tanzania the entrance fees are even higher but Lake Manara, Tarangire and Arusha NP can very easily be done independently, with a 4WD, and there is some wildlife watching outside the reserves. Of course you can’t drive around at night.
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Martin Walsh VN
Thanks for the recommendations, Steve. Agree with South Africa, great infrastructure for doing your own thing, your way. I was considering Tanzania later this year, so good to hear that it’s not all expensive package safaris!
On Taman Negara, I was there in 2023 and there were signs saying you “should” take a guide on the longer trails, but nothing to stop you going on your own. I ignored the signs and never had any problems — in fact, I only saw other people once or twice in 5 days. So, should still be fine to unless things have changed very recently.
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Moses Swanson the XVI
Zimbabwe is not to easy but there are some places that you can go that are cheap. The Savé has some of the best mammalwatching in the country. No entrance fees and you can drive without a guide. I recommend a guide, as they are cheap and can help you see a to. I love visiting and know that there is a great potential. It is also one of the only places you can see the big 5 in Zimbabwe.
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Martin Walsh VN
Hey Moses! Yes, guides in many places are excellent. Ideally, I like to spend a couple of days exploring alone and then hire a guide for a day, too. At the very least, it spreads the economic benefits around, even if I don’t see anything beyond what I can find on my own, and at best, they have local knowledge of good areas to look for hard-to-see species. Thanks for your suggestion, I’ll check out Save!
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Ian Thompson
A few additional spots that come to mind: Rocky Mountain National Parks in Canada, Calakmul in Mexico, Cockscomb in Belize, Cuero y Salado in Honduras, Santa Rosa in Costa Rica, Pipeline Road/Soberania in Panama, Lauca in Chile, Emas in Brazil, Canande in Ecuador, Los Amigos in Peru, Iguazu in Argentina/Brazil, and lots of the parks in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
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Steve Babbs
I’m very interested in Los Amigos, I hadn’t heard of that one. So you can just wander around without a guide?
Reasonably priced and guide-free rainforest areas in South America do appear to be rare. There were plenty in Venezuela when I was there in 87 but that’s not a lot of help and I’ve struggled since. I’d love to be told I’m wrong and to be given a long list of sites.
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Ian Thompson
Hi Steve,
Los Amigos is just downstream from Manu National Park in Peruvian Amazonia. You can access it by boat from Puerto Maldonado. No guide required, lodging is basic but fine, meals are provided, and there is an excellent network of trails. Jon did a trip report on Los Amigos in May 2019. There are a huge number of parks in Latin America for which one doesn’t require a guide. I’d be happy to chat and make some suggestions based on what you might be looking for. Please feel free to email me at ibtson@yahoo.com and we can find a time for a zoom call. Cheers.
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JanEbr
Thinks in this regard are going downhill and fast, so the main advice is: go as fast as possible. Someone mentioned Emas? No longer accessible without a guide at night (changed in last few years). In fact most national parks in Brazil are heavily limited and I had a lot of bad experience in south America. The best thing to do in Brazil is just spotlight Transpantaneira over and over, nobody stops you from doing that, at least for now.
Honestly, if you want more answers to your question, just look up my reports 🙂 Looking for places when I don’t have to drag around a stranger is basically what I do in all my spare time. The best places so far I would say were Mongolia and French Guiana – both with zero restrictions on anything and good animals. Obviously most of Europe is pretty free and so is most of North America (in the US only western half with public lands everywhere), but there is, at least for me as a European, much less variety of exciting mammals. Oman, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are super free, but not many mammals.
We had a good time in Southern Africa (SAR, Namibia, Botswana and the around) and Kenya, but the restrictions on night activity were pretty annoying. At least in Kenya, you have Rukinga, where – so far – you can night drive your heart out.
Ultimately, in many places, you can “sneak in” mammal-watching on public roads and paths just bordering the parks or through some private places. We had a very nice experience in Indonesia – on Bali, in the Plantaran resort, where we could stay for a good price and do absolutely whatever we wanted.
The interesting thing is that we – the people who don’t like to be guided – are a very tiny majority. If you read random reports, you will find guided trips 90% of the time. If you don’t like mine, read Vladimir Dinets’s – he has kinda quit the site (and he also turned to the dark side as he guided trips himself) but his older writings are super fun in all the ways he sneaked around restrictions.
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Karina and Andrey
Valdes Peninsula, Argentina (with a rented car); Maria Island, Tasmania (camping)