Safari Life…An Introduction

Safari Schedule

5:45 am Wake Up Call

6:00 am Breakfast

6:30-6:45 am Begin Morning Safari

9:30-10:00 am Tea and Biscuits on Safari

12:00 pm Lunch

1:00-3:15 pm Rest Time/Free Time

3:15 pm Shower

3:30-6:30 pm Afternoon Safari With Possible Tea

6:30 pm Return To Camp, Snack, Reflect

7:30 pm Dinner

9:00 pm Lights Out (at least for me)

Goodness, this post is a beast (pun intended)! Covering eight days of Safari in one post feels daunting and maybe a bit impossible. Since I’ve committed to the writing, we’ll see where it goes. Surely I’ll derail somewhere and find ways to make new posts. Until then, buckle up and let’s go!

Animals don’t seem to follow the daily routine of most humans. If you want to see something spectacular occurring somewhere in nature, it’s going to take odd hours, a lot of patience, and inordinate amounts of down time. I can’t tell you how often we would just drive around looking at the “McDonalds of the bush”—the impala—while hoping to find something unique.

Then, we’d see another vehicle stopped. We would head over to their location, and there would be lions lounging or Wild African Dogs on the hunt. At that moment, time would cease to exist. Everyone in each vehicle would become instantly bonded by our mutual experience. One vehicle would silently point to the unseen animal lurking behind the trees while the other vehicle would pull out cameras or binoculars to gaze in awe at the spectacle before us. We would listen to the calls of other animals alerting the bush to the dangers before them, and we would watch to see what would happen next.

Every day of Safari was like this. Some days we would drive around for an hour hoping to find something great. Scotty (our guide) would listen to the night sounds and the radio chatter with the intent of finding the perfect moment. Other days as we were leaving camp, the animals would find us. No matter how we happened upon the animals we were always grateful.

As grateful as we were though, we didn’t think we were outside the norm until we spoke with other travelers on our way home. Many saw lions once, but they didn’t see leopards or cheetahs. When we mentioned the bounty we beheld, many were amazed at our success. On our last night I asked Scotty and Annelies what would have been something that we could have seen to put our trip over the top? The only thing they said was more. We’d seen all the big ticket items.

As I come to the end of this post I realize I just can’t do it. There is too much to say for one post. There are too many moments when we witnessed something special. The animals we saw and the time we spent just deserve more.