A Field Guide to the Women You Meet on Safari

There is something about safari that brings out a woman’s true character.

Perhaps it is the 5:00 a.m. wake-up call. Perhaps it is being expected to look cheerful before coffee. Perhaps it is the moment she discovers that “comfort stop” is safari language for crouching behind a bush while keeping one eye open for lions and the other on the approaching game-drive vehicle.

Whatever the cause, the wilderness strips away pretence remarkably quickly.

By the third morning, nobody cares who packed designer luggage, who arrived with a 14-step skincare routine or who claimed she was “very low-maintenance.” We have all inhaled dust, worn the same trousers twice and discovered that a sports bra can become a reasonably effective storage facility during an emergency.



And while every woman is gloriously different, certain safari personalities do tend to appear in the wild. Consider this a gentle field guide to identifying them.

You may recognise your friends. You may recognise yourself. In my case, I have been several of these women before breakfast.

The Woman Who Packed for Every Possible Emergency

She has a first-aid kit that could stabilise a small village.

Headache? She has tablets. Blister? Three varieties of plaster. Sudden allergic reaction to an obscure African shrub? She has antihistamines, sterile wipes and a laminated evacuation plan.

Her bag contains sunscreen, mosquito repellent, electrolyte sachets, safety pins, ginger sweets, spare batteries, a sewing kit and something called an “emergency thermal blanket,” despite the current temperature being 36 degrees Celsius.

You may mock her during the packing stage. Do not.

By Day Three, when you have a headache, a torn shirt and a suspicious bite on your ankle, she will rise like a khaki-clad Florence Nightingale and quietly save your life.

Every safari group needs one of these women. Ideally, she should be seated within reaching distance at all times.

The Wildlife Photographer Who Has Become One With Her Camera

You can identify her by the large telephoto lens, the slightly haunted expression and the fact that she has not looked directly at another human being since the first lion sighting.

She knows her shutter speed, aperture and ISO. She also knows exactly which branch ruined the leopard photograph that would otherwise have secured her eternal glory.

When the guide says, “There’s a lion on the right,” she does not look right. She checks the light, changes a setting, braces the camera and begins firing approximately 900 frames of what appears to everyone else to be the same lion doing absolutely nothing.

Later, she will examine each image at full magnification and announce that none of them is sharp.

This is rarely true.

She has captured every whisker, every eyelash and possibly the lion’s private thoughts. But perfection is a cruel mistress, and the wildlife photographer has chosen to travel with her.



She will, however, produce the photograph everyone uses as their profile picture for the next five years.

The Woman Who Came for the Wine but Stayed for the Wild Dogs

She initially booked the safari because someone mentioned sundowners.

Her early questions included: “What do people wear to dinner?” and “Will there be decent wine?” She regarded the 5:00 a.m. wake-up call as a personal attack and reacted to the first morning alarm with the wounded confusion of someone who had been betrayed by civilisation.

Then she sees wild dogs hunting.

Suddenly, the woman who had planned to skip the afternoon drive is standing in the vehicle, eyes wide, whispering, “Where are they going?”

By the end of the trip, she is identifying birds, discussing animal tracks and refusing to leave a leopard sighting even though the gin and tonics are waiting.

The wilderness gets her in the end.



It usually does.

The Bird Woman

At first, nobody understands her.

The rest of the vehicle is searching desperately for lions while she is delighted by a small brown bird sitting on a small brown branch against a very brown background.

Then she begins explaining.

That “small brown bird” is a juvenile something-or-other with a fascinating migration pattern and a call that sounds like a squeaky gate. She spots an owl nobody else noticed. She knows which eagle is circling overhead and why the oxpecker is shouting.

Slowly, against your better judgement, you become interested.



By the final day, the entire vehicle is arguing over whether a distant shape is a tawny eagle or a Wahlberg’s eagle. Nobody is entirely sure what happened to them. They came to see elephants. They are now emotionally invested in a hornbill.

The Bird Woman is patient. She knew this would happen.

The Woman Who Is Always Cold

Africa has a reputation for being hot. This reputation was clearly developed by someone who has never sat in an open safari vehicle before sunrise in July.

The Woman Who Is Always Cold arrives wearing every layer she owns.

She has a shirt, fleece, jacket, scarf, beanie and blanket. Only her eyes are visible. She resembles a very well-insulated hostage.

She accepts the lodge’s hot-water bottle with the gratitude usually reserved for major organ donors. When the vehicle begins moving, she leans away from the wind and enters a state of quiet survival.

Three hours later, the sun is blazing. Everyone else is stripping off layers and applying sunscreen. She removes one glove.



She is still cold..

The Woman Who Refuses to Miss Anything

She is first at the vehicle every morning.

Not merely on time. Early.

While the rest of us are trying to locate our shoes and remember our own names, she has filled her water bottle, cleaned her binoculars and selected the ideal seat.

She will not skip a drive. She will not take an afternoon nap. She will not risk missing the exact moment a leopard climbs a tree, an elephant calf sneezes or a dung beetle makes a questionable navigational decision.

Her stamina is unnerving.

On Day Five, the rest of the group is moving like a collection of exhausted zombies. She remains bright-eyed and ready for the next activity.



We envy her. We admire her. We also occasionally want to hide her alarm clock.

The Nervous One Who Turns Out to Be the Bravest

Before the trip, she worries about everything.

Snakes. Spiders. Malaria. The small aircraft. The large aircraft. What happens if an elephant approaches the vehicle? What happens if an elephant does not approach the vehicle? Is the water safe? Are the rooms safe? Can baboons open doors?

To be fair, baboons can open many things and should never be underestimated.

But then she arrives.

She gets onto the small plane. She sits quietly while elephants walk past the vehicle. She sleeps in a canvas tent while lions call in the distance. She crosses a suspension bridge, tries unfamiliar food and discovers that courage is not the absence of fear. It is doing the thing while your stomach files a formal complaint.



By the end of the journey, she is often the woman encouraging everyone else.

This transformation is one of my favourite things to witness.

The Human Snack Cupboard

She always has food.

Nobody saw her pack it. Nobody knows where it comes from. Yet somehow, halfway through a game drive, she produces nuts, dried fruit, biscuits or an emergency chocolate bar.

Her timing is impeccable.

Just as breakfast begins to feel like a distant childhood memory, she passes around snacks with the quiet authority of a benevolent drug lord.

She understands a fundamental truth about group travel: many emotional crises are actually low blood sugar.



If she also has wet wipes, marry her.

So, Which Safari Woman Are You?

The honest answer is probably several.

You might be the nervous traveller on the first day, the wildlife photographer by the third and the woman quietly stuffing pastries into her pocket by the fifth.

That is the lovely thing about safari. It does not merely show you Africa. It introduces you to versions of yourself that everyday life does not always make room for. The brave version. The curious version. The version who can laugh when her hair is full of dust, her trousers are questionable and a vervet monkey has stolen her breakfast.

Women arrive on safari carrying different stories, different fears and wildly different quantities of luggage. But after a few days in the wilderness, the labels matter less.

We become the women who got up before dawn.

The women who watched elephants cross the road in silence.

The women who laughed until we cried over something that would make absolutely no sense back home.

The women who discovered that we were more capable, more adventurous and considerably less bothered by bush toilets than we had imagined.

And if we happened to enjoy a glass of wine while discovering all of this, that is simply good expedition planning.

If you want to join the remarkable bunch of women who form bonds in Africa get in contact now!