What's the Ultimate Way to Go on Safari? Give One as a Gift—And Make it Personal
Of all the gifts I received for my bar mitzvah, there’s only one I remember well. Surely there were checks in multiples of $18—a number considered to be good luck—and whatever questionable treasures a 13-year-old might have desired in the mid-1990s, but those all fade into the background of the gift. My godmother, a larger-than-life character who insisted on being called “Mamie,” in a nod to her cinematic model, took me to Greece.
Today I might question the wisdom of choosing to trek internationally with a teenager, but more than that, I’ve been left with a lasting lesson: Nothing makes a better gift than travel.
Nearly three decades after Mamie and I tromped across Athens, wandered through the churches of Tinos, and got into a minor fender bender on Mykonos (“Don’t you dare tell your father,” I can still hear her hissing), I got the chance to steal her move.
My own husband has always wanted to go on safari, but in the 13 years we’ve been together, while we’ve traveled far and wide, it stayed on the wish list as other vacations came and went. Last summer, after more than two years spent more or less at home and with a big birthday on the horizon, the time finally felt right.
But where to begin? We knew there were certain things that were musts: a stay at Ellerman House in Cape Town; a visit to Boulders Beach, where African penguins run wild; a safari someplace where we could see the Big Five animals but not sleep in tents (we don’t go in for glamping). But we had no idea how to bring them together into a cohesive adventure. That’s where Elizabeth Gordon, the co-founder and CEO of Extraordinary Journeys, came in. “A lot of people come to us and say, ‘We want to go on a trip,’ ” Gordon tells me. “Our job is trying to figure out why.”
To begin the process of truly personalizing our trip, we had a series of phone and Zoom calls with Gordon, explaining the way we like to travel, from the sorts of hotels we prefer to the kinds of meals we like to eat and how we spend our downtime. She asked questions about the places we’d been, the experiences we’d had, and what we couldn’t come back to the U.S. without having experienced. She admitted later that she also did some light Instagram stalking to get a sense of who she was dealing with.
“The first thing we need to do is understand where a person is coming from and what excites them,” she says. “Anyone can say they want to go on a safari, but that means different things to different people. A lot of it is talking to people and understanding them— where do they live, what do they like to do? You try to start getting a picture of what a client will want.”
From the minute we landed in Cape Town, it was obvious that her picture was clear. The trip hadn’t been personalized to be just what we wanted but to be what she knew we’d never forget.
Take our visit to Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town’s museum of contemporary art. We walked through the collection with Talita Swarts, a tour guide who specializes in art and works extensively with Ellerman House’s own stunning in-house collection. What could have ended in the gift shop became something else. A few texts were sent, and suddenly we’d been invited into the Christopher Moller Gallery, where we drank coffee as a shipment of new paintings was being unpacked. From there we hopped over to the Woodstock neighborhood and the loft of artist Matthew Hindley, who unrolled canvases for us and sat to chat about his work as if we were all old friends.
Almost everything in Cape Town had that element of surprise. We knew Ellerman House was a bucket list hotel with million-dollar views and a perfect blend of elegance and equanimity, but we didn’t expect the massages upon arrival to be brilliant tonics for jet lag. We had told Gordon that Boulders Beach was a must but never expected to arrive there by helicopter. We had mentioned a fondness for coffee but were shocked to be brought to travel guru Ozzy Yerlikaya’s countryside cottage, where we had an alfresco lunch prepared by Master Chef South Africa alum Jade de Waal and espresso pulled by champion barista Winston Douglas Thomas. This feeling of wonder would stay with us in Cape Town and beyond.
Next we flew to Cheetah Plains, a private game reserve in Sabi Sand that has the look of a summer colony designed by Richard Serra, where everything seemed planned just for us. Each party at the property has its own villa, guestrooms, swimming pool, and staff, including cooks and a spa specialist, giving the feeling that there’s no one else staying on-site. House iPhones come preloaded with WhatsApp to text with the staff, each meal is planned with the guests for a completely customized culinary experience, and twice-daily game drives, which we took with our masterful guide, Civilized Ngwenya, were private and designed to maximize our time at the property. Neither Gordon nor our formidable house manager, Clementine Silinda, could promise we’d see all of the animals on our wish list, but they didn’t need to. Over the course of our stay we spotted leopards and elephants, and on one memorable night we sped through the brush chasing a lion whose attempts to avoid detection were no match for Civ’s skill. It was one of the most exciting drives of my life.
From there we flew north to Tswalu, a private game reserve in the Kalahari ecosystem, where we stayed at Motse, one of the two camps on-site. While the property had a more communal feel—guests congregated for meals and milled about a main lodge, making for a White Lotus vibe—there was no sense of embarking on a cookie-cutter adventure. Our guide, Juan Venter, brought us to walk among habituated meerkats, raced to get next to lions napping beside the remains of their just-devoured lunch, and let us wander through the studio of artist-in-residence Hedwig Barry. On our last night we ate at Klein Jan, chef Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen’s absurdly elegant eatery hidden in plain sight. Guests walk into what looks like a small house in the sand and, after descending a spiral staircase, find themselves in a dining room as beautifully appointed as any I’ve ever seen, one that serves a locally procured tasting menu of dishes. Once again, what we expected didn’t disappoint, but it was what we never knew we wanted that made the greatest impression.
“When it comes to travel, surprises are fun,” Gordon says. “I love it when I’ve picked up on something about someone and am able to offer it without them knowing. I have no problem doing something simple for very fancy clients if the experience is worth having. If someone doesn’t know better, they’ll just pick what’s most expensive, and that’s not always the right trip.”
Nothing illustrates her point better than the final leg of our journey, when we landed in Johannesburg for a day of sightseeing. We walked through Constitution Hill, the former prison turned museum, with art maven Carole Brown, who helped build the site’s collection, and we skipped the tourist traps to buy gifts at a store recommended by our tour guide, a native Joburger. Best of all, we visited the Pantry, an upscale food shop and boutique attached to a gas station that is run by restaurateurs David Higgs and Gary Kyriacou; I bought my favorite souvenirs there. It was odd to be in a convenience store halfway around the world buzzing with excitement, but once again, what was unexpected turned out to be just right.
This kind of personalized adventure wasn’t only incredible to go on, it was that much more gratifying to give. “This has been the greatest trip of my life,” my husband told me the night before we left South Africa. Then he took a beat. “Where are we going next?”
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