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| The Great Serengeti Migration, Tanzania. |
Two things are certain when you reach into that bucket list and
choose an African safari. The choices you need to make are intimidating.
And no matter how you choose to go, your safari will be the best trip
you will ever take.
So, how to narrow the daunting array of
choices? Which season is ideal? Which part of Africa? Sign on with one
of the many tour groups, or instead privately arrange your trip with a
safari operator?
Let's start with a basic assumption: This bucket
list safari will be both your first and your only, even though you may
get the Africa "bug" once you've experienced it and eventually return.
You'll
want to consider the kinds of animals in the major safari areas on the
continent, the natural surroundings and historic sights, and safety in
this age of terrorism.
First, safety. The only U.S. State Department travel warning for safari areas covers Kenya, but it doesn't specifically mention Kenya's Masai Mara,
a prime safari destination in the past. Many tour groups still include
Kenya, especially the Masai Mara, and despite horrific attacks in Nairobi,
there have been no terror incidents in safari areas. Kenya's decline as
the greatest safari destination is ironic because the Kenyan safari is
the original, from early in the 1900s, when Teddy Roosevelt's expeditions fed Americans' fascination with the continent.
Where to go
Which part of Africa is best for a first trip? Most experts would focus on any of three safari destinations — South Africa, neighboring countries in Southern Africa, Tanzania
— all of which offer a variety of accommodations from spartan to
luxurious, whether you're with a tour group or a safari operator.
Whichever you choose, you will find skilled and friendly African guides
eager to show you the magnificence of the continent.
South Africa
has several vast national parks, and private reserves within them.
Chief among the parks is the enormous Kruger, with its mix of paved and
unpaved roads that the safari vehicles traverse in extensive cover.
That contrasts with the less structured dirt lanes on the savanna in
parks in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia, where the game ride drivers can roam through the landscape.
Naturalist
David Clapp, the expert lecturer and veteran of 50 safaris who
accompanied the Smithsonian Journeys tour we chose, noted that Kruger
has an abundance of game. "The visitor misses very little," he said.
Adjoining
Kruger is another huge area known for superb game viewing, the private
Sabi Sand reserve, with an extremely high density of animals, notably
leopards.
A second main itinerary centers just north of South Africa, in Botswana — particularly its Chobe National Park,
with the world's largest number of elephants — and neighboring Zimbabwe
and Zambia. Our trip spent three days in each of those countries,
exploring a variety of habitats. Combining the three makes it quite
likely you will find the most coveted species, especially if you go to
one of the private reserves where the endangered black rhino is
protected from poachers who sell their horns to Asian markets. In nearby
Namibia, there still are some rhinos in the wild.
That itinerary also allows you to visit the breathtaking Victoria Falls,
which lies between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Standing in the mist of the
pounding falls with the ever-present rainbow at your back is a bucket
list item all by itself.
The third dream safari destination is Tanzania, in East Africa. The unique attraction is the Great Migration, the annual mass movement of hundreds of thousands of wildebeests, gazelles and zebras that pour down from Tanzania's Ngorongoro Highlands bound for the Serengeti plain, as well as the predator lions, leopards and cheetahs that await them.
In addition, this itinerary includes the UNESCO World Heritage site Ngorongoro Crater, in the Maasai
tribal area. You descend the basin of the collapsed volcano, once
higher than Mount Kilimanjaro, to see a vast variety of wildlife,
including rhinos, in the rivers, lakes and forests at the crater's
bottom. Nearby is the Olduvai Gorge in the Great Rift Valley, where anthropologists have found evidence of some of man's earliest ancestors.
Once-in-a-lifetime wildlife
Guidebooks
and tour pamphlets talk about the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant,
Cape buffalo, rhino), a term that has lost its original meaning when
coined a century ago: the five beasts most dangerous to hunt on foot.
Our Smithsonian Journeys tour director, Robyn Steegstra, went through
our 12-day safari without ever referring to the Big Five, even though we
did see them all, as well as hippos, zebras, giraffes, baboons, a huge
variety of antelopes, and a magnificent array of birds. "Why is a Cape
buffalo better to see than a giraffe? It is a marketing ploy. People
get disappointed if they miss one of the five when they've seen so much
else," she explained.
We were there soon after Cecil the lion was
shot in Zimbabwe by an American trophy hunter and it was still in the
headlines. Naturally, trophy hunting was on our minds as we talked with
our expert African game ride drivers (though we were far removed from
the concession lands where hunting is allowed). Typical was this view of
a veteran driver for the Royal Zambezi Lodge in Zambia, Chris
Musonda: "I am glad the Cecil shooting made people see that our animals
are endangered, especially the cats. I fear they will not endure much
longer. Africans really do not want money from hunters. Money from
tourism is better and most of us cannot imagine shooting these animals."
Many villagers are not as sanguine about lions, which kill hundreds of
people a year and prey on livestock. Nevertheless, several countries
have recently instituted hunting bans.
When to go
Though
you might save as much as 30% in accommodations by going off-season, if
this is your one and only safari, you may decide to follow the old
adage: You get what you pay for. For southern Africa, the best time is
our summer and their winter, when you get more wildlife viewing because
it is dry and the animals congregate in watering areas. There also is
less foliage so viewing is easier. You get temperate days, almost no
rain and therefore fewer mosquitos (and a reduced malaria threat). If
you go in the spring, you get a lot of rain, though for birders, the
rainy season can be good. If you go in October or November, temperatures
hit extreme highs.
The best season for the safari areas in
northern South Africa and for Botswana-Zimbabwe-Zambia is from May to
September, with August and September optimal.
However, high season
to witness Tanzania's Great Migration is late December through
February, when hundreds of thousands of animals are sweeping from the
highlands to the plains.
What it costs
Here
are some samples of rates through some well-known tour groups, just to
give a rough idea of what an organized tour costs, not including
airfare:
For the 13-day Botswana-Zimbabwe-Zambia trip with
Smithsonian Journeys, the land-only rate per person is $6,400 in April
or November, $7,000 from May to September. A similar trip with Road Scholar for a slightly longer stay and slightly different itinerary is $7,800 in April, $8,000 from June to September.
Comparing
Great Migration Tanzania itineraries, which have variations in length
and accommodations, Road Scholar's rate is $5,600 per person, National
Geographic Expeditions charges $9,000, and high-end Abercrombie and
Kent's "In Style" trip is $14,000.
Of course, there are ways to do it yourself. You can rent a car and set out on your own as many South Africans do. Kruger National Park has over thirty state-run campsites, and lodging prices are as low as $100 a day.
And
you can explore the web for lodges and tented camps just as you would
if you were planning any other trip. Those lodges and camps almost
always include meals and game rides and boat trips.
Or you can
engage a safari operator and chart your own itinerary, rather than
joining a tour group. On the highest end, you can privately fly into
remote areas with incredibly luxurious tented accommodations and meals,
and spend as much as $20,000 a person.
But it almost doesn't
matter which way you go for your bucket-list safari. As Clapp told me:
"Africa can win you over easily. What you see is so good you never
really feel you missed anything."
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