The Stories We Carry Home From Safari

My wife and I have been travelling through Africa for more than 30 years now. Over that time, we’ve travelled from the top of Kenya to the very bottom of South Africa. From the deserts of Namibia in the west to the plains of Tanzania in the east, and almost everywhere in between. Collectively, we have now visited close to a thousand safari lodges across the continent.

A few weeks ago, I attended Africa’s Travel Indaba in Durban. Walking through the exhibition halls, passing lodge after lodge, I found myself quietly drifting through memories of places we had visited over the years. Some of those lodges were extraordinary. Some less so. Many, if I’m being honest, have slowly blurred together over time. And it made me think about something we spent a great deal of time discussing when creating Oase.

What actually stays with people after safari?

When people first think about Africa, they often imagine wildlife. The first lion. The first elephant. The first leopard disappearing into the grass at dusk. And those moments absolutely matter.

Many of our strongest safari memories are still “firsts.” Our first safari lodge. Our first walking safari. Our first time in Namibia. Our first pangolin sighting.

Then there are the dramatic moments you never forget — being chased by a black rhino, an elephant charging the vehicle, hyenas fighting over scraps in the darkness while guests sat frozen in silence. But strangely, as the years pass, those moments become less isolated in memory... Another leopard at another lodge on another day eventually blends into the hundreds that came before and after it.

The memories that stay sharpest are usually something else entirely. They are stories.

For many years, my wife and I frequented a particular lodge in the Timbavati. We probably visited that lodge fifty or sixty times over the years. Back in those early visits, the guides often told guests the story (or perhaps legends would be a better word) — of a ranger who had a few too many drinks one hot evening and decided to return to a dam he had visited earlier with guests.

Apparently, during the drive that afternoon, he had joked about how unusual it was that there were no crocodiles in the dam.

Later that night, after a few drinks, he decided to go for a swim. Unfortunately for him, sometime during the early evening, a crocodile had moved into the dam. Long story short, he lost an arm to the croc that night.

Now, like most safari stories told around a fire late at night, the details always seemed to shift slightly depending on who was telling it. Every guide seemed to add their own variation. The old “it was this big…” effect. Over time, I honestly started assuming it was simply one of those exaggerated bush stories told to entertain guests.

Over the years, we became good friends with one of the guides at this lodge — Mark.

During one visit, my wife and I were planning a trip through Namibia, and Mark was telling us about some of the remote places he had visited there. Half jokingly, I suggested he should join us for the trip as our guide. To my surprise, he agreed.

A few months later, we found ourselves driving through the far northwest of Namibia toward an incredibly remote lodge. I still remember the drive taking the better part of nine hours. Endless dry riverbeds, mountains in the distance, almost no signs of civilisation at all (apart from the occasional donkey driven carts).

When we finally arrived, we checked into our room and later met at the bar before dinner.

Mark walked in looking unusually excited.

“He’s here,” he said.

“Who’s here?” I asked.

“The ranger from the crocodile story who lost an arm in the Timbavati”

I shook my head in disbelief. We had spent years assuming the whole thing was just safari folklore. A story guides told gullible guests after a few drinks around the fire. But no. It was real. Not long afterwards, a one-armed man walked into the room and introduced himself as Ian tell us he was the Lodge Manager at this camp.

That evening after dinner, my wife and I took our drinks over to the fire to warm up against the cold desert air. Ian was already sitting there alone.

We started chatting. After more than twenty years living in Africa, Ian still had an incredibly thick Scottish accent. Eventually he noticed our Australian accents and asked where we were from.

When we told him Australia, he smiled and asked:

“Do you know The Man From Snowy River?”

“Of course,” I replied. “Every Australian knows it… although I probably couldn’t recite it anymore.” The Man From Snowy River is a famous Australia Poem - 1050 words across 14 stanzas written in 1890 and turned into a movie in the 80's.

At that point Ian asked “Do you mind if I do?”

How could I possibly say no?

And so, sitting around a fire at an extremely remote lodge in Namibia, a one-armed Scotsman — who I had spent years believing was nothing more than a made-up safari legend — proceeded to recite The Man From Snowy River word for word for the next twenty-five minutes without missing a line.

Even now, writing this 20+ years later, I still get a slight shiver thinking about it. Two Australians in the middle of nowhere, listening to a Scottish ranger in Africa reciting one of Australia’s most famous poems from memory beneath the stars of the Milky Way.

You couldn’t invent it if you tried.

This is Africa.

And these are the memories that stay with you.

Not simply another game drive. Not another checklist sighting. Not another luxury suite... Stories.

Unexpected moments. People you meet along the way. Things that could only ever happen there.

My wife and I have collected many such stories over the years travelling through Africa. And when we created Oase, those were the memories we thought about most. Not how many animals guests would see in a day. But whether years later they would still find themselves telling stories about their time there.