Gorongosa Safaris launches the Lion House Sleep Out
A sleep out with a story, on the roof of one of Africa’s most famous safari buildings
In the middle of Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, there’s a building that lions used to sleep on. Not beside it, on it. For years, the park’s prides climbed its spiral staircase and stretched out on the flat roof, watching the floodplain below, and the photographs of them up there made the Lion House one of the best-known buildings in African safari history.
Gorongosa Safaris has now opened that roof to guests as a way to honour this incredible history. The Lion House Sleep Out is a private night on the newly refurbished rooftop for up to two people, a chance to spend the night where the lions once did.
The park itself covers more than a million acres of central Mozambique, from forests and grassy floodplains to the slopes of Mount Gorongosa. Its wildlife was all but wiped out during the civil war, and over the past two decades it has been brought back, with lions and wild dogs now numbering in the hundreds again.
How the lions moved in
The Lion House was built in 1940 as Gorongosa’s first tourist camp. It didn’t last long as a camp. The floodplain goes underwater every wet season, and before long the building was left to the floods and the wildlife. The lions took it over for themselves.
It has stood there ever since, through the park’s golden years, the war and the long recovery that followed. Now it has been carefully and thoughtfully restored too.
A night on the rooftop of Gorongosa’s history
After dinner at camp, a guide drives guests out to the Lion House and stays close by right through the night. The roof is yours, and the only lions keeping you company are the ones you can hear calling somewhere out on the plain. There’s not much to do up there except lie back under the stars and listen to the sounds of Gorongosa.
In the morning there’s coffee on the roof as the sun comes up over the Rift Valley floor, usually with waterbuck grazing below. Downstairs, a small museum tells the building’s story and the park’s, from the early days to the present.
“The Lion House is part of Gorongosa’s DNA. It’s watched over this plain through the park’s best days and its hardest ones, so we wanted to restore it with real care and keep its history front and centre,” says Doug Flynn, CEO of Gorongosa Safaris. “Lots of places offer a sleep out, but this one comes with a story. You’re lying on that roof, listening to lions call across the same plain they’ve been watching for eighty years. I honestly think it’s the best sleep out in Africa.”
WATCH THE FILM ABOUT THE RETURN OF THE LION HOUSE
Media kit and contacts
Images, the Lion House film, the flyer and fact sheets are available to download for websites, social media and client proposals:
Reservations: [email protected] | +27 71 389 1140 (WhatsApp)
Marketing and media: [email protected]