Safari – Once in a Lifetime (But Hopefully Not)

A lot of safari bookings are for people’s first time, and for many, it ends up being their last too. Not because they didn’t enjoy it—quite the opposite. They were eaten by the lions.  Rest in peace.

No, the real reason is that whilst I’ve never met anyone who didn’t fall in love with safari, there’s a big world out there, and most people want to tick off other places: the Amalfi Coast, Tokyo, Bognor Regis, the nearest gloryhole at the nearest McDonald’s service station.  I get it.

It’s especially popular for honeymooners. We’re talking safari here, not the gloryholes. It’s the kind of experience people save for a truly special occasion. Shame there aren’t divorce-party safaris or memorial safaris—then we’d have clients for life. In fact, I’m calling dibs—I want my rotten corpse tossed to the wild dogs and everyone to toast me.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes.  I was reminded of how magical a first safari can be on a recent trip to Suyian Lodge. I met a honeymooning couple who were absolutely buzzing—they’d just seen a cheetah. They came over wide-eyed, practically vibrating with excitement, desperate to share the moment. For them, it was the pinnacle of the trip.  I’ve seen hundreds of cheetahs.   I’ve watched them nap under bushes, botch hunts, make kills, and once I even had one stretch its claws across the spare wheel—right beside my wife’s face.  So seeing a cheetah is not exciting.  It’s as common as baby lotion at Diddy’s office.

But seeing them was exciting.  The couple, that is. So am I saying that we should go on safari, for the experience of observing humans instead?  Maybe.  It brought me straight back to my first safari, when I got excited only seeing an impala, only to realise there are, at a conservative count by scientists, fifty billion of them.  And I excitedly told my guide that elephants were right beside our room and asked if he wanted to come see it—thinking I was alerting him to a once-in-a-lifetime sighting. That’s like being in New York and dragging a local to see “your” rat in the subway. They’re not coming. They’ve seen it. They know its cousin. They probably named it.

But for all my blissful, sweet, ignorance that’s what makes safari so special. It allows you to feel like you’ve discovered something unseen and wild, even if a hundred guests before you stood in the exact same spot with the same silly grin.