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| Southern giraffes near Hwange Bush Camp in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. |
Jane and I had planned a couple of weeks of safari in 2023 in conjunction with an exploration of Egypt. That trip didn't happen. But for May 2026 we revived the idea of game drives and safari camps that we had enjoyed during a 2016 trip to Africa. This time the countries would be Namibia for its other-worldly deserts, Zimbabwe for its wildlife, and South Africa for an unusual and game-rich sand forest.
It would be mid- or late-fall in sub-Saharan Africa and the nights and mornings could be cold but most days were mild and pleasant. We were in Zimbabwe about a month after the end of the rainy season, but it had been an unusually wet season, so our idea that camps with their own watering holes would make for great game sighting didn't work out There were still too many ponds and streams with water throughout the bush. Nevertheless, we did see lions, elephants, hippos, rhinos and cape (or African) buffalo. As well as hyenas, warthogs, bat-eared foxes, jackels, a cheetah, a mongoose and loads of birds, And countless antelope, including oryx, impala, kudu, nyala and sable.
We relied on Wilderness Destinations, a British-based safari agency, for help in planning, booking camps and arranging all internal transportation. The only things we booked ourself were flights from San Diego to London to Johannesburg (and back) on British Air. Although we met other travelers in Africa who were staying exclusively at Wilderness camps, only two of the seven camps we visited were Wilderness. Freddie Sutton, our advisor at Wilderness, found us two of the minimalist seasonal tented camps that we wanted to experience (Hwange Bush and John's), as well as mid-level (Kulala and Davison's), and a couple of camps that I would call safari resorts (Amalinda and Phinda Forest Lodge). One place, Shipwreck Lodge, defies classification.
Here's how the trip went:
On April 28 we left San Diego around 7:30pm for an 11-hour flight to London, where we connected with an 11-hour flight to Johannesburg, arriving there the morning of May 1. We spent that first night, a Friday, at City Lodge, one of two hotels in the Johannesburg airport. (We had built-in a one-day buffer in case our long-haul flights were delayed or canceled.)
The next morning we boarded a 10:40 Airlink flight to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, where we waited in Wilderness's small lounge for a flight on a 12-passenger Wilderness Air Cessna Caravan to an airstrip near Sossusvlei, the towering red sand dunes that we were there to see. A short drive from the airstrip took us to Kulala Desert Lodge, a Wilderness property. We were there three nights with days spent exploring the dunes and seeing desert oryx, black-back jackels and other wildlife. We stayed in a thatch-roofed cabin that had a rooftop deck for star-gazing or even sleeping, though it was too cold for that.
On Tuesday, May 5, we went back to that airstrip for a four-hour charter flight on a tiny Cessna 210, an aircraft that has been out of production since 1986. It still had ashtrays in the armrests. After stopping to refuel at coastal Swakopmund ("The Centre of Adventure"), we landed at Mowe Bay on Namibia's Atlantic coast. Then it was a two-hour drive over beaches and through sand dunes to Shipwreck Lodge, the inn that had whetted our interest in what is called the Skeleton Coast. Wilderness has several desert camps in the general area, but we wanted Shipwreck for its amazingly isolated location on the coast. We stayed here three nights. Jane "surfed" a sand dune and we explored the beach, canyons and dunes. A huge seal colony near Mowe Bay is another amazing if quite odorous attraction. Cabins here resemble the shipwrecks that gave the coast its name. While we were at dinner each night, someone came and lit a fire in our small wood-burning stove and slipped hot-water bottles into our beds.
Next we had another Cessna 210 flight and a one-night (May 8, a Friday) stopover in Windhoek, which gave me an opportunity to see a doctor about pain in my right calf that started when I arrived a week earlier in Johannesburg. Our Wilderness driver took me to a private hospital's emergency room where a sonogram showed I had a bad bruise ("complex fluid collection") within the soleus muscle in my calf, something that clears up with time, rest, ice, compression and elevation. I was relieved that it was something relatively minor, not the deep vein thrombosis that fellow travelers kept suggesting. We spent one night at Olive Grove Guesthouse, and had dinner in its excellent restaurant. For the first time on this trip, I had game: a braised eland fillet. On menus in Africa, venison means antelope and it can be any of many, many kinds of antelope. Eland is the world's largest antelope and its meat is often compared to beef. Windhoek, by the way, seemed like a tidy and affluent place, though I wouldn't suggest it as a destination for more than a layover.
That Satuday, May 9, it was an Airlink flight back to Johannesburg and then another to Bulawayo. At more than a million people, it is Zimbabwe's second-largest city and is the gateway to the relatively small Matopos National Park. Our next lodge, Amalinda, is just outside the park, which is known for its granite outcroppings and rhinos. We were here only two nights, which I think was enough to appreciate the lodge, in which granite boulders are incorporated into the design of all the buildings. Our cabin had a sitting area, a king-zize bed with mosquito netting, and a large bath area, all separated by natural boulders, some of which were there before the cabin was built around them. Amalinda seems to be a hybrid, a safari camp that is also a resort, complete with an infinity pool, spa and massage service (none of which we tried). We had one full day for game drives. Guests with more time can hike to see ancient stone paintings. We did make it to the top of the granite hill to see the grave of Cecil John Rhodes, the mining baron for whom the former Rhodesia (today's Zimbabwe) was named. We also walked in the bush to see a pair of rhinos up close, a pregnant adult with her adolescent calf. As in other game-protected areas, most the the adult rhinos' horns have been removed to make them less attractive to poachers, who kill the animals to remove the horns.
Next was what was supposed to be a four-hour drive to Hwange National Park followed by a two-hour drive to our camp there. The first portion took hours longer than expected due to unpaved and pot-holed detours around roadwork projects, and virtually unpaved and pot-holed sections that were awaiting road work, A miserable ride. We finally made it to the camp, Davison's, a Wilderness camp named for Hwange National Park's first manager a century ago. Davison's has pumped watering hole right in front of it but the unusally wet rainy season had left too many natural watering holes out in the bush and the camp's attracted no customers. We did see lions, giraffes, zebras, impala, jackals and more on our game drives, though. We were here three nights, staying in a thatch-roofed cabin with canvas walls. Very comfortable. Some of the meals were based on the local cuisine, though no game was offered. Breakfast was around the fire pit as dawn was about to break. This was one of our mid-level camps.
We left Davison's airstrip on Thursday, May 14, for a 45-minute flight to Robin's airstrip where we were picked up and driven to our next camp. It was the much more basic Hwange Bush Camp, a camp with bucket showers and no wi-fi (except for the staff's use). We were here three nights and for most of the time the ony other guest was a woman from Toulouse, France. Here we had two guides, Sean, who liked walking safaris, and B., who apparently wasn't certified yet to lead walks. Zimbabwe seems to have a pretty rigorous guide certification program. Guides can give you the Latin names for most animals and many plants. Someone in the kitchen at Hwange Bush was an excellent baker, with breads and even brownies that were first-rate. Here we did see warthogs and an elephant in front of our "tent," which was a shed-like structure with a metal roof and canvas walls. The bucket shower involved telling a staff member when we wanted to shower and they filled a high-mounted tank that fed heated water to the shower in our tent. The bathroom sink and the flush toilet had conventional plumbing.
On May 17, a Sunday, it took two and a half hours to fly from Robin's airstrip to the Mana Pools airstrip, just south of the Zambezi River and Zimbabwe's border with Zambia. We had two stops, one for refueling and one to drop other guests off at a different airstrip. We were headed to John's Camp, another very basic camp. Here there were two other guests, a retiree and his adult son, both from San Diego, just like us. We stayed three nights here in a tent that required two zippers to enter and another two zippers to get to the toilet and shower, which were in a roofless area at the back of the tent. Here the bucket shower involved a very big bucket that you stand under and reach up to turn a valve. The bucket was high enough for me to stand under it, which meant the valve was too high for Jane to reach. Clearly room for improvement here. Our tent was close enough to the main tent that its wi-fi signal reached us. And, thanks to an accomodation made to a previous guest, our tent had electric power and we could recharge everything there rather than in the main tent. So this very basic camp didn't seem quite so basic to us. And the food was the best we had had so far on the trip. Our guide made it his mission to find lions, but to no success. We were at the Mana Pools, freshwater pools that are supposed to attract loads of game in the dry season, but again we were so early in the dry season that nimals were still finding plenty of water elsewhere. We had thought the camp would be right on the Zambezi River, but the river was about a kilometer away, across a flood plain.
On Wednesday, May 20, we flew two hours from the Mana Pools airstrip to Victoria Falls. We staye at the Ilala Lodge Hotel, which is within walking distance of the falls. There are also crafts markets nearby, including one indoor market where prices are marked and bartering isn't necessary. We did most of our Africa shopping there. The Ilala's grounds are mostly off-limits to human visitors because wildlife visitors use it. Shortly after arriving, we were having lunch on a terrace and spotted a warthog trotting across the lawn below. Soon afterward a group of perhaps five elephants showed up at a watering hole for a good half-hour. This is in the middle of town by a busy road. The falls are as awesome as expected, though the heavy mist makes them hard to see at ground level. The unusually wet rainy season meant that the volume of water going over the falls was higher than it had been in 40 years. We also got to see them from above on a helicopter ride, which I'd highly recommend.
Our trip was winding down with one last destination, a four-night stay at &Beyond's Phinda Forest Lodge, which involved an Airlink flight from Victoria Falls to Johannesburg and then another Airlink flight to Richards Bay. Unfortunately, our flight from Victoria Falls was delayed and we missed the flight to Richards Bay, the last flight of the day. So Airlink sent us to an Anew Hotel about 20 minutes from the airport. We were booked on a different Airlink flight the next morning. After an hour-long flight to Richards Bay and then a two-hour drive, we arrived at Forest Lodge in time for a late lunch and an afternoon game drive, so all was not lost. We still had three nights here.
Phinda is a game reserve that the eco-resort chain &Beyond created 30 yeaes ago from reclaimed farmland and uses for several lodges. Although it is a fenced reserve, it's not as zoo-like as some game parks and there are plenty of places for rhinos and other large mammals to hide. Safaris do involve a good bit of spotting, tracking and luck. We thought we were pretty lucky to follow a cheetah for perhaps 20 minutes as it strolled down a sandy road searching for the impalas that we had seen running off earlier. The game sighting were pretty good, but the lodge was over the top. We met several guests from Durban (a major city three and a half hours away) who were using the pool, its bar, the spa and massage services to have their own little "White Lotus" getaways. "Mini bars" in the cabins were stocked with full-size bottles of Tanqueray, Jamesons and other premium spirits. At smaller camps we chatted with and got to know the other guests, usually pulling tables together at dinner. Here everyone seemed to keep to themselves, as people do at hotels.
Our trip ended on Tuesday, May 26, with an Airlink flight from Richards Bay to Johannesburg, then British Air to London where we had a direct BA flight to San Diego, getting home that Wednesday afternoon.
Here are a few snapshots:
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| Visitors to Sossusvlei, which is in Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia, climb "Big Daddy," one of many towering red sand dunes that rise up to 400 meters (1,300 feet) from white salt pans. |
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| All 10 cabins at Shipwreck Lodge resemble the wrecked ships for which Namibia's Skeleton Coast is named. There's a constant battle here with wind and sand. Walkways get buried in sand, and the lodge provides scarf-like gaiters that guests can wear to protect their faces from being sandblasted. That's the Atlantic Ocean in the distance. |
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| Baboons scamper on a road at Matopos National Park in Zimbabwe. |
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| As at most safari camps, the day at Davison's starts early, with a "Wake Up" shout outside one's tent at 5:30am, followed by a simple breakfast prepared at the firepit (above). The morning drives put you back in camp in time for lunch, maybe a quick nap, and then tea at :3:30 and the evening game drive, which almost always includes a stop for "sundowner" cocktails at a scenic spot before returning to camp for dinner. |
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| Elephants in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, seen on a Hwange Bush Camp game drive. There's always something to see on any game drive. |
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| Hippos leave a watering hole near John's Camp in Zimbabwe's Mana Pools National Park. |
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| Victoria Falls' dimensions (combined width of 1,708 meters or more than a mile and height of 108 meters or 354 feet) make it the world's largest waterfall in terms of the size of the sheet of falling water. This is the view as you prepare to walk the sidewalks opposite the falls. The heavy mist feels like rain and visitors when we were there were getting soaked. We had ponchos, but I ended up discarding a pair of sneakers that didn't dry before we left the area. Jane rented a pair of Crocs from a vendor just outside the entrance to the falls. |
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| Morning game drives at Phinda Forest Lodge included a stop where the ranger would offer guests coffee or tea. On our first morning drive, though, the stop was for a "surprise" full brunch in the bush for all the lodge's guests. Included were mimosas, sparkling wine, screw drivers and other drinks, along with bacon, eggs, beans, sauteed muschrooms and a variety of other breakfast foods. Our vehicle was the first to arrive. |
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