The Part of Safari Nobody Prepares You For…
There is a version of a safari where the landscape is the story, and that version is real and worth every word written about it. But somewhere between the thundering majesty of Victoria Falls and the ancient forests of Mana Pools National Park, it stopped being what I noticed first. After spending nine days across three of African Bush Camps’ most extraordinary Experiences, what I kept returning to wasn’t what I was seeing. It was who was showing it to me.
Day 1-3: Thorntree River Lodge, Zambia
My African Bush Camps Experience began the moment I landed in Zambia.
At Livingstone Airport, before the dust of arrival had even settled, Guide Esther was there. Warm towels, an ice-cold water bottle pressed into my hand, and we were on our way, the Zambian bush scrolling past on the twenty-minute drive to camp. Esther established herself with a gentle authority that set the tone immediately. There is a quality to a female guide that brings an innate patience and calmness to the safari experience, and Esther made that clear before we’d even reached camp.
Arrival at Thorntree River Lodge is not a check-in. It is a welcome, in the most literal sense. We were greeted like returning members of the community, with singing and dancing and a warmth that felt completely uncontrived. A welcome drink in hand, we settled in for orientation overlooking the Zambezi River, which was moving at a pace that immediately commanded respect. Lunch followed on the expansive viewing deck before we were shown to our luxury suites, each privately positioned along the riverbank, copper-finished throughout (Zambia holds some of the world’s highest-grade copper reserves, the lifeblood of a nation’s economy). Mosquito nets billowed over king-size beds, a indulgent private plunge pool waited outside, and beyond the garden, the Mighty Zambezi pushed on, indifferent to everything but its own course.
As the sun began its descent that first afternoon, we boarded the boat with Guide Ezzy and pushed out onto the river for a sunset cruise, the sky already turning that particular shade of pink that no photograph can ever quite capture. Ezzy is one of those people who contains multitudes. A musician and rapper off the water, and on it an entirely different kind of artist: one who reads currents and sandbars, mimics bird calls with uncanny accuracy, and knows exactly which lure will tempt a tigerfish.
Guide Ezzy teaching us how to cast for tigerfish on the Zambezi River.
We watched hippos surface nearby without so much as a glance in our direction, and elephants appear on the bank above us, moving through the bush with that majestic unbotheredness that only elephants have. Ezzy cut the engine and we drifted beneath them, looking up at animals whose sheer scale from below took our breath away. It was, without question, a perfect first day.
The next morning, Guide Esther took us tracking for rhino on foot. I realized that standing alongside an animal that has roamed this earth for millions of years is a feeling that no game vehicle viewing can replicate. Esther, soft-spoken and deliberate, reads the landscape with a composure that feels almost reverent, with her eyes doing the work her voice doesn’t need to. She brought out a wonder in that experience that I don’t think anyone else could have. Even the animals seem to sense her tenderness, and in a world that rewards the loudest voice, she is proof that the bush reveals itself most freely to those who know how to tune in.
Guide Esther telling us about the endangered rhinos that are protected 24/7.
Back at camp, Lucky was waiting, and Lucky is never not smiling. As Thorntree’s sommelier and cocktail maestro, he knows his craft completely but it’s his enthusiasm of sharing that knowledge that really strikes you. He doesn’t pour a drink so much as present one, handing over each glass with the pride of someone who loves what he does. That smile, I should warn you, is very catching.
If Lucky is the heartbeat of the bar, Hellen is the soul of the lodge. As manager, she carries Thorntree River Lodge with a grace that no job description could ever capture. It was the image of her sitting around the fire with us that stayed with us longest, deep in conversation about family, life, work, no topic seemingly out of reach. We were laughing like old friends who had simply run out of time to meet until now. A camp takes on the character of the person who leads it, and Thorntree is graceful because Hellen is.
Then there’s Bernadette, whose face is so open and kind that you feel immediately at home in her presence. She started at Thorntree River Lodge in 2017 as a room attendant and worked her way up to become Lead Foundation Guide for the African Bush Camps Foundation. Her role now is to connect guests with the communities surrounding the Experiences, to show travelers that the impact African Bush Camps has extends far beyond the lodges themselves. In places like Maunga Village (located about an hour’s drive from Thorntree), the Foundation has helped build clinics, support schools, and create opportunities for women and girls who had ambition but not opportunity. Bernadette is the bridge between those two worlds, and having walked both of them herself, she carries that story with a credibility that no amount of training could replicate.
Leaving Thorntree River Lodge, I had a feeling the people were always going to be the story. Somalisa Camp was about to prove me right.
Relaxed afternoons at Thorntree River Lodge spent connecting, laughing, and chatting on the banks of the Zambezi River.
Day 3-6: Somalisa Camp, Zimbabwe
Hwange National Park opens up beneath our small eight-seater bush plane, forest stretching endlessly in every direction, a scale that makes the word big feel inadequate. There’s no tarmac landing strip here, just a dirt road cut into the bush, and the plane sets down on it as if concrete were always an overcomplication.
Guide Martin was waiting as we stepped off the plane, reserved and a little stoic, someone you sense doesn’t laugh easily (which makes it count for something when he does). The thirty-minute game drive to Somalisa Camp became our first real introduction to him. He asked what we were hoping to see, what we were interested in, listening more than he talked, already shaping the days ahead around the answers. It took less than an afternoon to understand why guides like him are the reason people return to African Bush Camps.
Guide Martin at sunrise, just before we stopped for our morning coffee.
Somalisa Camp is the company’s flagship Experience, and it wears that title with ease. There’s an authenticity here that no interior designer could replicate, earned over years of real use. A waterhole sits in front of camp and keeps the afternoons interesting, but the Elephant Pool is the real draw: a dedicated ‘swimming pool’ for elephants, where they arrive on their own terms to drink and bathe while you watch from the deck above. This is one front row seat that never gets old.
Host Sam was waiting to welcome us, and within minutes of meeting her, the fatigue of a long travel day simply lifted. She has a wit and a warmth that fills a room without effort, and as the days unfolded, it became clear that nothing happened at Somalisa without Sam knowing about it first. She sat us down for an introduction to camp that felt more like catching up than checking in, and from that point on everything just flowed. Wake-up times, meal preferences, activities – all of it taken care of before you’d even thought to ask. Hosting like that is rarer than people realize, and Sam makes it look entirely effortless.
Host Sam and her contagious smile!
We dropped our bags, ate lunch, and were back in the vehicle within the hour, Martin already steering us toward something exciting. A pride of lions had taken down a buffalo a few days earlier and had been feeding on it since, and he knew exactly where to find them.
A male, three females, three small cubs, all gathered around the carcass. The smell reached us first, thick and rotten, then the sound of bone cracking under jaw, flies dense in the air above the kill. The cubs tumbled between bites, playfighting one moment and gnawing the next, absorbing everything the adults did with an almost comic, wobbly concentration. Martin positioned the vehicle with the instinct of someone who has done this long enough to know exactly how close is close enough. Nobody said a word. We were all completely absorbed in what was unfolding in front of us, and once, when one of the cubs slipped off the carcass mid-bite, I caught Martin laugh.
Guide Calvet is something of a living legend at Somalisa Camp, and you feel it within minutes of meeting him. Ask him about any lion in Hwange National Park and he’ll tell you its story, its personality, its history, where it came from and where it’s likely headed. The rest of the team clearly holds him in high regard, and it’s not hard to see why. His knowledge took decades to accumulate, but it’s his warmth that catches you off guard. Every morning he greeted me with a hug, and every evening I found myself wanting to pull up a chair and stay there, talking about anything at all. An evening with Calvet feels like time you didn’t know you needed.
Guide Calvet having a laugh while he tells us about the Lions of Somalisa.
Somalisa didn’t let us depart quietly. As we were about to climb into the vehicle, bound for the airstrip, Calvet gathered the entire team for a farewell and signaled for the drums to start. Suddenly, feet were stomping, bodies were swaying, and voices were rising. We stood there and took it all in, a send-off so generous it made us feel like we had been there much longer than three days.
The wonderful team at Somalisa Camp gifting us a farewell dance.
After waving a final goodbye, we climbed into the vehicle, Martin drove us to the airstrip, and we said a rather sad goodbye.
Our next flight out took us over the mountains, bumpy through the peaks and then calm again, until Lake Kariba filled the window below. We touched down briefly to refuel, and stepping off the plane I was not prepared for the scale of it. As the world’s largest man-made reservoir, it stretches so far beyond the horizon that the word lake feels entirely insufficient. Then, we were back in the air, heading for Mana Pools National Park.
Day 6-9: Nyamatusi Camp, Zimbabwe
Mana Pools National Park feels like somewhere the rest of the world fortunately forgot to find. Ancient albida forests, four pools that have been drawing wildlife to their banks for centuries, and the Zambezi River threading through it all. UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1984, though the elephants and wild dogs who call it home never needed to be told.
Guide Brian was waiting when we landed, quietly spoken and a little earnest, with the endearing energy of someone who really cares about getting things right. Where most guides scan the distance for the next sighting, Brian was already crouched at the base of a tree, showing us how to boil down the roots into a tea that would soothe nausea. He knew the medicinal uses of plants and the traditional names for things that don’t appear in any book. Walking with him, I found myself slowing down, looking closer, and noticing things I would have otherwise walked straight past.
Guide Brian making G&Ts on the banks of the Zambezi River.
The game drive to Nyamatusi Camp took about an hour and a half, and Mana Pools didn’t waste a minute of it. Warthogs trotted across the road, impala moved through the plains in their hundreds, crocodiles lay motionless on the sandbars, and elephants grazed between the albida trees, sometimes all of this within meters of each other. The light shifted between cool blue in the shadows and warm gold where the sun broke through the canopy, the Zambezi River threading in and out of view along the banks. By the time Nyamatusi came into view, all silvered timber and open decks with the river spread out below, I had stopped trying to find words for it.
The team welcomed us with song and dance that made us smile before we’d even stepped off the vehicle. Moments later, a cold drink appeared in our hands that tasted like watermelon and raspberries, bright and refreshing and exactly right for the heat of the afternoon.
Our host Taffy sat us down for orientation with a warm professionalism that put us immediately at ease. He had a presence that filled the room without effort, and somewhere between the welcome drink and dinner his story started coming out. He’d joined African Bush Camps barely out of school, tried everything, waitering, housekeeping, guiding, working his way through each department until something clicked. Hosting was the one that fit, he said, because it put him closest to the guests. You could hear it in how he talked about the work, that this was a person who had found his calling.
Host Taffy joining us for very special sundowners on the Zambezi River.
Our luxury tented suite was its own small world: a private plunge pool, an outdoor shower that I shared, somewhat delightfully, with a family of tiny frogs, and a bed so comfortable it became difficult to leave in the mornings. The finishings and furniture carried a richness that felt almost Balinese, comprised of organic textures and beautiful carved floral details that somehow made perfect sense against the backdrop of a Zimbabwean floodplain.
Then there was Cloud. He introduced himself exactly as you’d hope someone named Cloud would: “The only Cloud on the ground,” he said, with the sparkle of someone who has delivered that line a hundred times and means it every single time. It was Cloud who guided us on our canoe safari, and from the moment we met him it was clear that the Zambezi was his element entirely. Every current, every island, every bend and shallow and secret the river holds.
I will be honest. I was nervous. The Zambezi is hippo territory, and I have a sincere respect for that fact. As we launched, there were around twenty of them just meters from our canoes, surfacing and submerging with what I can only describe as pointed indifference to our presence. My grip tightened. Cloud noticed and didn’t make a performance of it. He gave us our instructions, told us to relax, and pushed ahead in his own canoe with the calm of someone who has never once doubted this river. The hippos stay in the depths during the day, he told us. They won’t come to the shallows. I took a breath and we paddled on.
Guide Cloud navigating the river with the calm authority of someone who knows every secret it holds.
The river was so still you could hear everything. With flat Zimbabwe on one side and mountainous Zambia on the other, I’ll admit I wasn’t always pulling my weight with the paddle, far too taken by this mesmerizing scene.
We reached our end point as the sun began its final descent to find Taffy waiting on the bank with a sundowner setup that made us all laugh with delight. Crisp white wine, chicken skewers, homemade meatballs, appearing as if from nowhere in the middle of the Zimbabwean bush. We sat on the banks of the Zambezi as the sky turned pink and then deep orange, eating and talking and not wanting any of it to end.
There is a particular kind of ache that comes with leaving somewhere that started to feel like home. You leave full, grateful, and with the feeling that you have just left somewhere you were always meant to find.
A moment of gratitude on the banks of the Zambezi River as the sun disappears.
African Bush Camps: Be Guided by the Best
What African Bush Camps has built cannot be found in the suite or the sundowner or the perfectly positioned game vehicle, though all of those things are exceptional. It lives in the culture, and the culture lives in the people. Those who chose this work, who grew up in these landscapes, for whom guiding a guest through the bush or hosting them at dinner is not a job but an expression of who they are. That generosity of spirit is, in the end, what makes a safari with African Bush Camps so extraordinarily special.
The wildlife will take your breath away, the landscapes will become ingrained in your mind, but it’s the people you’ll find yourself thinking about on the flight home and long after.