BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL AFRICAN SAFARI

When you book a safari, you expect to see exotic animals in the wild. What you’re not prepared for is the rush that comes when you actually spot them, singly, in herds or clustered en masse as in Edward Hicks’ painting Peaceable Kingdom or in the works of Henri Rousseau.

You’re also not prepared for elemental pleasures: hot tea with rusks (cross between cookies and granola bars) before leaving your tent for breakfast, the lull of the evening campfire, the embrace of more stars dangling overhead than you’ve ever seen in your life, the landscape that extends beyond the horizon like an ocean.

A safari has the potential to place an indelible tattoo on your soul. Sure, you have the photographs, the diaries, the videos, the collectibles, and the new email addresses of the nice people you travel with. But you also have rocking through your memory the elephant tendering its baby at the side of a watering hole and how tall those giraffes stripping tree-top leaves actually are.

If your adventure begins in Cape Town and environs you also get a snapshot of how imperialism -- doesn’t matter which non-natives at this point -- overrode the African bush cultures to create vineyards and ranches and villas close to where two oceans (Indian and Atlantic) embrace to forge a climate that can be likened to those of the Mediterranean and southern California.

So Cape Town is a good place to start enroute to a safari because while a stop at Starbucks may not be on the itinerary you’re confident that this watering hole, or something like a Starbucks, is somewhere around in this sophisticated-seeming big town and therefore you’re still in your comfort zone.

Imagine the cable car ride to the top of Table Mountain, the panoramas, the hike along the ridge line, wine tasting in Stellenbosch, nice dinners … could be Napa, Burgundy, or a mountain top resort. Hopping on bikes to traverse the oldest wine route on the Cape, sea kayaking with a penguin colony on Cape Peninsula, boating among 50-ton Southern Right Whales and watching the antics of a 60,000 strong Cape fur seal colony, then exploring Nelson Mandela’s maximum-security prison cell on Robben Island and witnessing the poverty of lives still lived in hope near the Cape Town airport where millions of people define life from the perspective of corrugated tin hovels… this is anything but the hermetically sealed world to which we’ve become inured in North America.

In fact, the absence of the contrasts of these disparate cultures comes as a relief the first night on the Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve, a short flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg to the Reserve. You’ve been prepped as regards to the contradictions of this continent, and your first night in camp, with only the stars to keep you company against the howl of the distant hyena and the snorting of an unidentified beast just yards away, brings the kind of peace that comes when you narrow the playing field. Here it’s you, the wilderness and its creatures without the complications of the civilized world.

As the folks who organize safari tours have become themselves more conversant with the habits of the wilderness, they’ve also become more creative in designing ways for their clients to explore the bush. Sure there’s still the traditional jeep-style vehicle moving clients to and fro on well-worn tracks. But today guests can also, in addition to hiking, mount horses and ride bikes in the bush under the close surveillance, of course, of trained guides prepared to step up to the plate should anything untoward happen to interfere -- like a lion forgetting to play its disinterested role. On the reserves where visitors can hike, bike and horseback ride, herbivores graze seemingly unfazed by humans and large predators are notably absent.

In other regions of southern Africa where predators do roam, guests can still extend experiences beyond the traditional jeep and view the landscape and its habitants by canoe, elephant, rafts on white-water rivers and even hot air balloons.

A cutting-edge U.S. active tour operator Austin-Lehman Adventures, offers a program called South Africa Safari & Multisport Adventure with three 2009 departures: Aug. 23, Sept. 13 and Nov. 01. The per person, double rate is $7,998 for 11 days / 10 nights in-country.

This rate reflects nearly all-inclusive costs of rooms with private baths, most all meals and snacks, professional, first-aid certified guides and local experts, bikes, kayaks, helmets and other necessary equipment, vehicle support during the trip, luggage service, detailed pre-departure and packing information, all taxes, dining and housekeeping gratuities, and national park entrance and permit fees.

For information on multi-sport safaris, including for families, please contact Austin-Lehman Adventures www.austinlehman.com or call 800 575 1540.

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Dennis Coello is an accomplished freelance writer, editor and photographer who has been taking pictures and writing books and articles for the past thirty years, travelling through more than forty countries and all fifty states while doing so. His work has appeared in the pages of Patagonia, Outside Magazine, Backpacker, Adventure Cycling, Asolo, Atlas Snowshoes, Blackburn, Cannondale, Topeak, Subaru, Sierra, Vogue, Outdoor Photographer, Men’s Journal and more. His work can be viewed at http://denniscoello.com.

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