Holt Family Safari
5 couples from Austin Texas, our repeat friends are back, 2 years later for another epic Safari, how do we top the last?
4 sisters and one brother plus 5 spouses, a totally great family group, we know we are going to have a blast.
2 Pilatus PC 12 NG – 2 pilots – 2 private guides and some excitement. We kick off with a big dose of shopping for the ladies in Johannesburg at an open-air curio market, and a round of golf for the boys, acclimatization, a great dinner, and an air of anticipation.
We head off with sunrise for the bucket list Victoria Falls, one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, a mighty waterfall on the great Zambezi River. A tour of the falls, take in the quaint little town, learn a lot and back into our machines headed for the Okavango Delta and great Plains Duba Explorers camp, a water wonderland inside the jewel that is Botswana and the Okavango Delta.
Duba Explorers camp is set along a quaint water channel, in the wild! Its immersive and luxurious at the same time, Elephants in camp, Lions walking by during dinner, and even tracks outside the tent in the morning. Hippos munching and buffaloes grazing. Baboons playing on the tents and birds everywhere. There is always something going on.
Our highlights at Duba – boat trips, fishing for Tiger fish, and cruising into the sunset, special, epic, unforgettable. Mother leopard and Cub lazing in a Leadwood tree, with a kill, traditional canoe gliding through the water, singing, laughing, campfire conversations.
Duba and the Okavango Delta definitely rank among my favourite places on the African Continent. Full of life, wild wilderness, incredible people, adventure, all the comforts. It has it all. Oh, and fishing, and Pels fishing Owls and Lions roaring through the night, and elephants and elephants and elephants, some close, some far, some big some in musth, some just born.
After 3 nights in Botswana, we wake up to a sunrise helicopter hop and a Male Lion waiting for us on the airstrip, into our machines, and off we go. We are headed for the Serengeti National Park.
The Great migration! Only with Safari Architects can one wake up in Botswana’s Okavango Delta and go to sleep in Serengeti National Park, truly incredible.
We land in Lamai – on the Tanzania / Kenya border, and game drive to our camp, en route the skies darken with a big storm, we start to see large herds of ungulates and we come across 3 male Cheetah on the hunt. A scene we will never forget.
Legendary Expeditions Nyasi camp is all about location. One of the major drawcards in July / August and September is the Wildebeest crossing the Mara River a treacherous journey, a very unpredictable situation, somehow, we strike it lucky on our first morning and sit enchanted as 4500 + Wildebeest cross the water.
We spend more time with massive herds in the afternoon, the camp is “basic”, and we are in the wild, and we are there for the Migration and the largest numbers of ungulates on the Safari circuit.
A highlight of the trip for many is Hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti and Mara River, and many of the group expressed their absolute delight, and named this as a top moment. Watching Cheetah form the air, floating in silence, the thrill!
From our “wild camping” we move into Singita and Faru Faru and Kwitonda – it does not get better. Faru Faru in The Grumeti Reserve up’s the ante in hospitality, food and wine. We are now drinking the best grapes South Africa produces, enjoying a sunset and fire out in the reserve, Lion sighting after lion sighting, Mating, feeding, fighting it’s all there!
Huge numbers of Zebra, wonderful birds, delicious coffee and cocktails, as well as massages. Grumeti is a protected paradise a wonderful reserve and a very special place!
Back into the Pilatus and off to Rwanda for Mountain Gorillas, certainly one of the most incredible wildlife encounters on the planet, the treks can be challenging, the conditions are wet, the altitude ranges from 7000 feet asl + and this is what makes it so rewarding.
Singita Kwitonda is a spectacular lodge, Rwanda a magnificent country and the smiles will never leave you. Meeting endangered mountain gorillas face to face, learning more about these creatures, trekking through the jungle, all in capable and safe hand’s, it is truly quite exhilarating and gets the blood pumping every time for me! It is a magnificent experience in bowl of extinct volcanoes – this is Gorillas in the Mist. What a way to end a tour. Just couldn’t think of doing it any better.
12 nights of absolute excitement, diversity, adventure and travel. Meeting Africa’s very best guides, friendliest people and the top accommodation establishments on the continent.
This was (if there is such a thing) the ultimate Safari!
Thank you, the Holt family, for a very special time together.