Elephant Crossings and Cheetah Hunts: A Journey Through Southern Africa

There is a specific kind of quiet that settles over you when you’ve been planning a trip for eight years. For my wife and I, this wasn’t a whim; it was a long-simmering dream that had sat on the back burner since we first spoke to Discover Africa nearly a decade ago.

Life, price points, and logistics got in the way then, but the call of the continent never quite faded. We are walkers – travellers who have trekked through Nepal multiple times and have stood fifteen feet from grizzly bears in the States. We like to be outside. We like the grit of the trail.

As we boarded our flight to Cape Town, there was a rare sense of the unknown. We didn’t really know what to expect, other than the hope that the wildlife would show up – and a lingering anxiety about the bugs.

A Gentle Start in the Mother City

Our journey began with a soft landing in Cape Town. Now, we usually travel totally independently – I’m the guy who carries his own bags and haggles for the taxi. So, being met at the airport by a professional greeter and whisked away in a Mercedes was a brand-new experience. It set a tone of seamlessness that would define the entire trip.

We spent our first night at the Victoria & Alfred Hotel. It was the perfect staging ground. We had an oversized room, which was a blessing because we had to perform the “safari shuffle” – transferring our lives from big suitcases into the small, soft-sided bags required for the bush.

My wife and I took a walk around the V&A Waterfront, grabbed a quiet dinner, and got a good night’s sleep. It was the calm before the wild.

The Thunder and the Quiet of the Falls

The transition to Victoria Falls felt like the true start. We stayed at Ilala Lodge – a really lovely hotel with fantastic breakfasts. Our room was on the ground floor; I was able to sit on the back porch to watch warthogs and small deer simply wandering across the lawn.

We made a strategic impulsive choice, asking Megan, our safari expert, to flip our tour to the first day. It was a good move. Victoria Falls is a high-energy hub, full of bungee jumping and adrenaline seekers, which isn’t exactly our speed anymore. By getting the guided tour done early, we understood the layout of the land.

The second day, being the walkers we are, we headed out on our own. We found a little path from the hotel to the park and did the paved circuit walk twice. It was sweltering, and we returned to the lodge as sweaty messes, but there’s a visceral satisfaction in seeing one of the world’s wonders on your own two feet, away from the souvenir shops selling the same t-shirts.

That evening, we had our first of many gin and tonics on a sunset boat cruise along the Zambezi.

Dust, Elephants, and the Chobe Rhythms

Crossing the border into Botswana involves washing your shoes to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. Watching the guides help some of the less-coordinated travellers through the process was a bit of comedy, but it was also a threshold. We were entering big game country now.

Chobe Safari Lodge, in the northeastern town of Kasane, was a hive of activity. The rhythm here was dictated by the river and the road. The water safaris were a revelation – the visibility from the boats was fantastic, and even when a crocodile appeared and everyone rushed to one side to snap a photo, it never felt crowded.

On land, the sheer volume of vehicles in Chobe was a shock. It felt like if a leopard was spotted, 5,000 trucks would materialise instantly. But there’s a code of conduct out there; drivers took turns, and the respect for the animals was evident.

We had one heart-stopping moment at an elephant crossing. A large male elephant took umbrage with our position on the road. He increased his pace, heading straight for the back-right seat where I was sitting. You could feel the weight of him. Our driver whispered, “We have to move,” and we didn’t argue.

As soon as we backed off, the elephant calmed, passing literally feet from our vehicle. It’s one thing to see them in a documentary; it’s another to have a multi-tonne bull tell you exactly who owns the road.

The Unexpected Magic of Kwara Camp

If Chobe was the introduction, the Okavango Delta was the masterpiece. Due to some construction and logistics, we ended up with a double upgrade, eventually landing at Kwara Camp. We arrived via helicopter – a soaring, bird’s-eye view of the floodplains – and were met by staff that felt more like a welcoming committee for old friends.

Kwara Camp was where the safari of my imagination came to life. Our tent was nearly as big as our house, complete with a dressing room and a sitting area. But it was the intimacy of the place that stayed with us. Unlike the larger lodges, here you stayed with the same guide and tracker every day. They became our eyes and ears.

The Cheetah Hunt: Nature in High Definition

We told our guides we wanted to see a pangolin or a porcupine, mostly as a joke because we knew how elusive they are. We didn’t see them, but Africa gave us something better. We spent hours tracking a mother cheetah and her two sons.

The highlight – and the most sobering moment – was witnessing the hunt. We watched the stalking, the incredible tension of the hidden approach, and then the explosion of speed. The son gave chase to an impala, a blur of spots and dust, but he missed. Then the mother, with the surgical precision of experience, made her move. She caught a pregnant impala almost instantly.

We sat there for a long time. Perhaps too long, as we watched the “destruction” of the impala. It was graphic, raw, and undeniably real. It was the cycle of life playing out three feet from our bumper. You don’t walk away from a moment like that the same person you were when you climbed into the truck that morning.

A Reflective Return

By the time we flew back to Cape Town for a final few days, the bug anxiety we’d arrived with seemed like a lifetime ago. We had prepared for a swarm – malaria pills, netting, face coverings – but in the heart of the dry season, we hadn’t seen a single mosquito. All that gear stayed in its plastic wrap, a souvenir of a fear that the bush quickly dispelled.

We spent our final days in Cape Town exploring on foot. We trekked six miles along the promenade toward Sea Point, enjoying the salt air and the farm-to-table lunches. I took the cable car up Table Mountain – the spinning gondola is a feat of engineering – and spent hours walking the plateau. We even saw ostriches running on the beach at the Cape of Good Hope, a final, surreal image to bookend the trip.

Looking back, this wasn’t just another vacation. We’ve seen the world, but this stands as probably the top trip of our lives. It wasn’t just the big moments like the cheetah hunt or the helicopter rides; it was the small things.

It was the blue gin and tonics we discovered at Kwara, the way the staff reintroduced themselves every day to make sure we felt at home, and the way the wild has a way of making you feel more alive.

Africa is a chapter that doesn’t really close. You just carry the rhythm of the Delta and the dust of the Chobe with you, waiting for the next time the quiet calls you back.

For first-time Africa explorers, a trip through southern Africa is the perfect introduction to safari adventures. From the mix of luxury and natural beauty in Cape Town to the winding waterways of the Delta, South Africa and Botswana offer some of the more enriching experiences on the continent with spectacular tourism infrastructures.

When you’re ready to take your dream southern Africa safari off the backburner, let our safari experts create a memorable and meaningful adventure for you.