In Maputo National Park, Mozambique’s National Administration of Conservation Areas and Peace Parks Foundation are working towards developing tourism infrastructure and facilities within the park. With the wildlife now flourishing, the focus here is shifting towards enhancing the visitor experience through developments such as picnic sites that have clean, and sometimes quite unique, ablutions as well as by adding personal touches throughout the park such as these custom-made picnic benches seen in the video above.
The Construction Of Custom Concrete Picnic Benches
To see how his team is getting along with this not-so-easy task, Peace Parks’ Technical Advisor in Maputo National Park, Brian Neubert, shows us the hard work that goes into creating these crafty additions to the newly established, low-impact picnic sites dotted throughout the park.
At the Elefantes picnic area, the team is busy building the bench moulds on-site – a necessary requirement as they are too heavy to move once completed. There is also the risk of the benches breaking whilst travelling long distances over the park’s rough and sandy roads.
A Logistical Challenge
When working in remote areas such as this, where the nearest town is four hours away over difficult terrain, the teams need to get creative and innovative when creating new infrastructure. To this end, one of the major challenges was getting the building material on site. Maputo National Park’s road network appeals more to the adventurous traveller that enjoys taking a 4×4 through sandy terrain, and so it can seem less appealing when trying to transport more delicate goods on these bumpy roads. Because of this, the construction material was carried to the sites using smaller 4×4’s for the benches to be made on site.
If you ever find yourself visiting Maputo National Park, make sure to pack a nice lunch that you can enjoy at these very snazzy new benches in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
