African Safari Destinations

Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa are the three we send most first-timers to. Kenya and Tanzania give you the classic open-plains safari with the widest range of animals and the shortest learning curve. South Africa is the easiest logistically, has malaria-free reserves, and pairs a few days of game viewing with Cape Town and the Winelands. If you are nervous about roughing it, start in South Africa. If you want the safari of the photographs, start in Kenya or Tanzania.

For most of the continent, the dry season. In East Africa that is roughly June to October, and in Southern Africa May to October. Water is scarce then, so animals gather at rivers and waterholes and the bush is thin enough to see through. The green season is quieter and cheaper, with newborn animals and dramatic skies, and in places like Tanzania it is actually the better time — the calving in the southern Serengeti runs January to March. One caveat on South Africa: the winter months are genuinely cold, June and July especially. If you want the Cape as well as the bush, and wildlife is not your entire focus, consider travelling after August. The month-by-month detail sits on each country’s guide.

The herds are in Tanzania all year round, moving through the Serengeti in a continuous loop, and they cross into Kenya’s Masai Mara roughly July to October — so there is always a stage of the migration happening somewhere. August and September are excellent from both the Masai Mara and the Serengeti, and the river crossings are at their most reliable then. The calving, which is the best time of year for predator action, happens in the southern Serengeti between January and March.

The Eastern Cape reserves in South Africa are malaria-free, as are the Kalahari, Gaborone and Francistown in Botswana, and Windhoek in Namibia. The Seychelles and Morocco have no malaria at all, and Brazil’s Pantanal and the Peruvian highlands around Cusco and Machu Picchu are free of it. Elsewhere the risk varies by region and season. This is a planning summary only — confirm what applies to your route with your doctor or a travel clinic before you travel.

Mountain gorillas live in only three countries: Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda is the most expensive but by far the easiest — a two-hour drive from Kigali. Uganda’s Bwindi holds more than half the world’s remaining population and permits cost considerably less. Virunga, in the DRC, is not accessible at the moment because of internal strife. Western lowland gorillas are a different animal and a different trip: you track them through rainforest in Gabon and the Congo Basin, alongside forest elephants and mandrills.

Our trips start from around US$3,500 per person in Kenya and run to US$12,000 and above in Gabon. As a working average for a customised safari we would budget around US$1,100 to US$1,300 per person per day, with some countries costing less and some more. What moves the number is the camp, the season and how much you fly rather than drive. The comparison table above shows the starting price for every destination we work in. Nothing is off the shelf, so the honest answer for any specific trip comes from a conversation.

Seven to ten days is the sweet spot for a single country, and it is what most of our itineraries run to. Fewer than five and you spend a disproportionate share of the trip in transit; more than two weeks and you usually want to add a second country or a few days on a beach. Namibia and South Africa reward longer because the driving distances are real, and the Congo River expedition is eighteen days by design.

Tanzania is the classic pairing — the Serengeti followed by Zanzibar, on the same set of flights. Mozambique’s Bazaruto and Benguerra archipelagos work as a finale to a Southern African safari, and the Seychelles adds granite islands and reef for anyone willing to fly a little further. Kenya has its own coast, and South Africa gives you the Garden Route instead.