Why Africa Captivates First-Time and Repeat Travelers Alike

This past November, we set off on safari together through South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Botswana. One of us was seeing Africa for the first time while the other had been going back for thirty years. We took the same flights over the bush, had the same wildlife sightings, and laughed at the same young elephant sparring with a shrub, but we were seeing it through very different eyes. What we found is that Africa is just as good from both seats. The first trip to Africa has a wonder to it that’s hard to describe, and somehow that never quite wears off; it just changes shape and keeps pulling you back.

Why Africa is Great for First-Timers

Lauren Odens

My time on safari was full of firsts. First bush walk, first boma dinner under the stars, and first time bundu bashing through the reserve with no real road in sight. I didn’t know what to expect, and it was beautiful and completely unfamiliar all at once. Here’s the thing I’d tell anyone on the fence about going on safari: not knowing is the best part. When nothing is familiar, you can’t run on autopilot; you’re just there, wide awake to all of it.

The wildlife proved that point faster than I was ready for. Minutes into our very first drive in the Sabi Sands, we came across a mother leopard and her two cubs feeding just off the road, completely unbothered by the vehicle full of people staring at them. I’d expected to spend days searching for a moment like that, but instead we rounded a corner and one was simply in front of us.

And it wasn’t just what we saw. On my first walking safari, along the N’wanetsi River, we heard hippos roar so close that I felt it before I understood what it was. I’d pictured hippos as lazy and comical. On foot, with that sound coming through the reeds, they were anything but. Everything was new and moved fast, and I couldn’t afford to be anywhere but right there in it.

Why Africa is Great for Repeat Travelers

Jenny Mikkelson

You’d think that after thirty years of going back to Africa the wonder might wear thin, but it doesn’t. The sightings still stop me every time. What changes is that I notice more around them: the small things a guide is reading, a fresh track, an alarm call, the sense that something is about to happen. I see how the same reserve shifts from one season to the next, and I pick friendships back up from camp to camp.

The biggest joy of returning is watching someone else experience Africa for the first time. That initial awe of being on safari never gets old. I’ve been lucky enough to witness it more than once. There was my mom’s mix of wonder and, she’d admit, a little fear on her first safari; she came back with me twice more. There was my best friend Liz’s disbelief when we spotted giraffes and lions on the drive from the airport, minutes after landing in Nairobi. This past trip, it was watching Lauren on her first safari drive. Seeing her face when we spotted the mother leopard and her cubs is something I’ll never forget.

Maybe that’s the real reason I keep coming back: less to see it again myself than to see it again through someone else’s eyes.

First Trip or Thirtieth

Africa doesn’t play favorites between the first trip and the fortieth. It gives first-timers a rush of firsts they’ll spend years trying to describe, and it gives returning travelers something quieter: the reward of knowing a place well and the joy of sharing it with others. On our last night in the Okavango, we sat side by side, a first-timer and a lifelong returner, feeling the very same awe.