Rae Safaris

13/09/2024

RAE Safaris - https://mailchi.mp/98a3859d0a2d/rae-safaris-8329392

25/06/2024

Biscuit...one of our trusty Land Cruisers, and I are rambling across central Botswana.

We started in Windhoek, Namibia...collecting regular safari guests and good mates Dr Patrick McLeroth and George Gacser at that airport a week and a half ago.

We have traveled long, dust swathed, corrugated dirt roads into remote northern Namibia...the arid, boulder strewn frontier of Damaraland, the endless, dessicated thorn tree country that is Etosha and the riverine splendor of Caprivi.

We crossed at a remote border post into Botswana near Shakawe and found a waterlogged wonderland at Xaro Lodge on the Okavango panhandle.

The Okavango is a living paradox...a vast river delta fed by rain water draining off of the distant Angolan highlands...and spreading out until its end in the middle of Botswana's central desert region. It is palm trees, crocodiles, hippos and aquatic abundance in the centre of one of earth's driest habitats!

I put Patrick and George on to their departing flight at Maun Airport this morning and Biscuit and I are now heading home...driving across Botswana and a portion of Limpopo province over the next two days.

We came across these elephant raiding the national water supply pipeline adjacent to the A3 national road near Nxai Pan today...there is severe drought in Namibia and Botswana this year and the pressure on the region's wildlife and human populations is most noticeable.

It remains a truly beautiful arid wilderness.

Wish you were here.

13/06/2024

What a journey we have had!

An ephemeral dry wind blew us across a dessicated and yet stunningly beautiful Namibia.

The adventure began for our group of veterinarians from the USA at Okonjima where we engaged with local vets in darting and health checking/collaring several apex carnivores...two leopards, a cheetah and a brown hyena.

We moved on to the vast, dusty savannas of Etosha and reveled in drifting herds of elephant, prides of lion and lithe, and nimble cheetah. Black rhino were to be found near waterholes jostling for territory and water...a real scarcity this year as Namibia prepares for a tough dry season.

Damaraland always twists my mind. Endless exposed geology...the very skeleton of Gondwanaland torn asunder as continents were birthed millions of years ago. On the sandstone...6000 year old engravings mark the presence of our first nation people as they eked an existence here way before...before it all changed.

And finally...the great desert emptiness of the Namib. Bronze infused dunes in the last light of dusk surrounded me as I stepped away from the group and closed my eyes with a deep reverence for the sheer primeval grandeur of the space. Barking geckos clicked around me and a wonderful stillness settled in my soul.

Wish you were here.

Photo by Adrienne vant' Wout...whose heart stands in these hills with mine.

18/05/2024

Our final day in East Africa.
I'm sitting on a patio watching a thunderstorm drift across a bruised tropical sky above Entebbe in Uganda...and quietly contemplating the myriad wonders we have seen over the last three weeks.

Three days ago in the cloud forested hill country of Bwindi I sat hunched in impenetrable undergrowth a few feet from an enormous Silverback Mountain Gorilla. We gazed at each other while I mused...wrestling with the concepts of my human origin and the plight of this fascinating, primeval beast.

Yesterday...on motorized dugout canoes, we wound our way into the papyrus choked maze that is Mabamba Bay adjacent to Lake Victoria searching for one of Africa's most bizarre and enigmatic birds...the Shoebill.

It has been nothing short of breathtaking...my heart remains forever on a lonely hill somewhere wild in this phenomenal, impossibly diverse wilderness eden.

East Africa...Tanzania...Uganda...we shall return.

Wish you were here.

Photo by David Parish.

.roode .kuzo.group

07/05/2024

What is there to say after a safari across some of the most iconic wildlife landscapes in Africa?

How does one decompress all of the various impressions?

We plied the muddy tracks in Lake Manyara National Park astride an enormous flooded soda lake and reveled in drifting Elephant herds, squawking Hornbills and mischevious Sykes Monkeys.
Later we ascended the Rift Valley escarpment to find our rest on a cloud shrouded coffee plantation.
The very next day we descended into the bizarre lost world of Ngorongoro to once again marvel at the herds and the carnivores and the sheer magnificence of the scenery.

And then Oldupai.

I stood at the site deep in a gorge where Mary Leakey discovered the fossil remains of Austrolopithecus boisei in 1959 and felt the sheer primeval timelessness of the place consume me.

Later on the short grass plains above Ndutu, we found the vast, braying, dust coated multitude...wildebeest and zebra in an endless jostling legion stretching to beyond the limits of the shimmering horizon.

We set about exploring Siringet...the endless plain...and found the various hunting beasts that stalk and dispatch their prey there...as they have done since before measured time.

This lithe and sleek feline assassin gazed across a valley below Gol Koppies in the late afternoon and waited patiently for her fuzzy little offspring to catch up with her.

We explored Tarangire today...Baobab studded wonderland...eventually arriving at our camp on the shores of a flamingo bedecked soda lake called Burunge.

We fly to the spice islands of Zanzibar tomorrow for some rest...and then...Uganda.
We go to seek the large primates, "the people of the forest", in those dark and mysterious shadow lands.

Wish you were here.

.roode .kuzo.group

11/03/2024

We jetted eastward over the high Andes range and descended into the deep, humid tropics of the Amazon basin.

Coca is a disheveled tropical town on the banks of the Payamino River. We boarded a high-speed motorized vessel there and sped off into that waterlogged maze...a wilderness of hanging lianas and soaring Kapok trees and endless, mist shrouded jungle.

Here in Ecuador's portion of the Amazon basin, three gargantuan rivers stream off of the Andes into these tepid lowlands en route to the Atlantic.

Two and a half hours by motorized craft and another two hours up a nameless forest covered creek by paddle canoe and we arrived...at Napo Wildlife Centre...on an obscure lake...in the very center...of nowhere.

The jungle is not quiet. There is a constant rhythm, cicadas and katydids buzzing, Caiman splashing, Howler Monkeys vocalizing across the vast canopy, haunting and vicious sounding...Hoatzins...prehistoric looking arboreal birds...flustered and untidy looking...eyed us from overhanging branches as we glided by...fluttering their feathers all the while.

I was in paradise.

I picked up and read Willard Price's Amazon Adventure as a small boy...and have been dreaming of this my entire life.

These Giant Otters are diabolical...huge, social carnivores that ply the overgrown backwaters of this immense wilderness region. They are apex carnivores and have been known to overpower large snakes and even Caiman. The family group of five cruised past our canoe, screeching to one another in their strange manner as they searched for something to catch and consume.

Here too...as Darwin before us...we encountered the bliss of nature...in the absence of man.

To quote James Fenimore Cooper..."It is more deeply stirring to my blood than any imagining could possibly have been."

Wish you were here.

Photo by Simon Wray.

🇪🇨

03/03/2024

In the remote grandeur...the blue emptiness of the endless Pacific...we have come upon a strange world...one born of the earth's core and entirely separate from the great land masses so familiar to us.

On these dramatic and impossible shores...nature has inexplicably found a way. The bleak, stark lava strewn landscapes dotted here and there with dessicated vegetation seem devoid of anything approaching life...and yet life abounds here...extraordinary...diabolical and strange and absolutely magnificent.

I find myself staring at it...and occassionally shaking my head as if to ensure that I am not losing my sense of reason.

It is in every profound sense of the word...unique...and seemingly impossible in the extreme.
It represents...as Antarctica does to my mind...the very harshest edge of the natural world...beautiful...dangerous...obscure...and entirely, utterly without mercy.

This morning...before dawn...we gazed in wonder as the volcano on Fernandina Island awoke from her slumber and spewed fire and molten rock into the darkness.

I am inexorably changed...my perspective powerfully reshaped...here at the edge of everything.

Unreal Galapagos. Wow!

Wish you were here.

roode .kuzo.group

26/02/2024

I boarded a plane that whisked me westward across the endless Atlantic via Sao Paulo and Lima to the Andean hill country of Ecuador.

Quito...the capital...is over 2800m above sea level and is considered the highest constitutional capital on earth.

I have seen Tanagers and Hummingbirds in the hotel gardens here in Puembo.

Why Ecuador? Well...several of our travel family will fly in here to join me in the coming days to stage for an epic expedition.

You see...thousands of kilometers further west...in the vast Pacific, lie a group of islands that have never been a part of a supercontinent...an archipelago born of volcanic activity below the sea...and colonized by the plethora of endemic creatures that call it home in one of only three ways...flying, floating or swimming.

It is an astounding center of endemism...one that Darwin utilized as a corner stone of his expounded theories on the origins of life.

Wednesday we will fly there...board our own private vessel...and explore this unique and otherworldly island chain...one I have dreamed of since I could first pronounce its name.

Galapagos.

It calls me out and I must go...

Wish you were here.

.kuzo.group 🇪🇨

05/02/2024

Our first safari adventure of the season draws inexorably to a close in the wild bushscapes of Madikwe.

And what an adventure it has been!

We aided the Pilanesberg Wildlife Trust with much needed field work on a Rhinoceros as part of their counter poaching initiatives.

We tracked African Wild Dogs and worked alongside the field officers in Madikwe, gaining unique insight into this beleaguered and misunderstood species.

The game viewing has been mesmerizing...charging Black Rhino, a multiplicity of big cats and other apex carnivores and the complete array of iconic Southern African savanna wildlife.

This lone colussus drifted one sublime evening across a distant ridge as the sun haemorrhaged in fiery splendor on the western horizon.

Wish you were here.

.kuzo.group .roode

24/01/2024

A delightful chat with the one and only David Batzofin.

If you have been on a game drive in any of our game reserves, no matter what the relevant Lodge tells you, that is NOT an actual safari experience. Andrew an...

19/01/2024

Bring me that Horizon... -

17/01/2024

Our latest newsletter...enjoy.

Adventure lies ahead... -

22/12/2023

We would like to wish all of our friends and everyone in our travel family around the globe a peaceful and joyful Christmas season and a prosperous New Year.

We trust you will enjoy some rest wherever you may be.

2024 beckons and it promises enormous adventure!

See you soon somewhere wild.

24/11/2023

What a pleasure it has been to guide Anders and Helene Bergstrom on their private safari.

We began the adventure in the land of giants...the magnificent Limpopo Valley where sandstone ridges and corpulent Baobabs preside over stark and arid Mopane veld and drifting herds of Elephant.

Across the river in Botswana's Mashatu Game Reserve we followed the various hunting felines as they stalked their ungulate prey congregating along the meandering riverbeds. Lions brought down a Giraffe the one evening and we were there to witness the frenzied aftermath the following morning.

In the jungle-like shadow lands of Northern Kruger we found enormous herds of Elephant and Buffalo along the flowing Levuvhu River.

We finished in the Manyeleti at the camp where it all began for me over thirty years ago...Pungwe.

This rosette spangled felid spent the morning casually marking his territory next to our game viewer before switching into bezerker mode...all focus and murderous intensity...then oozing forward...to rush suddenly and end the life of an unsuspecting Impala lamb.
Exquisitely shaped, golden liquid death.

Wish you were here.

16/11/2023

We have rambled across the dessicated desertscapes of Namibia with a dusty wind at our backs.

We have reveled in the quiet emptiness of the Namib...left breathless by the grandeur of that ancient desert and her ever marching bronze infused dunes.

We engaged hands on with the veterinary teams at Harnas and Okonjima...assisting with much needed field work on Lion and Brown Hyena.

And then...the impossible magnificence of Damaraland...a geological smorgasbord...the very skeleton of Gondwanaland.

The Bushman engravings at Twyfelfontein whispered of a time when our species first applied an artistic expression to the landscape...to the very foundation of our continent.

Later...in the Ana Tree adorned Aba Huab riverbed we found them...dust coated mastodons...the incredible desert adapted Elephants of this most unusual, often diabolical thirstland.

Wish you were here.

.roode

05/10/2023

It has been nothing short of breathtaking...the dunescapes of the infinite Kgalagadi.

I'm always at a loss to explain why Africa's desert expanses move me so.

I believe it might be the stark, endless beauty of it...simple and absolutely basic...displaying only the bare fundamentals of a wilderness without the ecological excess.
It is the mere skeleton of an ancient supercontinent...rock, sand and the few niche specialized plants and creatures that call it home...eking an existence on the edge of oblivion.

These two old warriors rattled sabres in fine style in the dessicated Auob riverbed amidst clouds of calciferous dust and the indignant jangle of a rising Korhaan.

I stood on a bronze infused sand dune on the last evening in the final rays of sunlight listening to the first tentative clicking of Barking Geckos and the blood pulsing through my veins and I found again absolute peace...a settling of the ragged cacophony of one's regular life that so plagues this ship of bones...and the savage soul within.

Wish you were here.

Photo by Steve Haist.

.roode

04/09/2023

We have always been awestruck by wilderness...and the more remote and untouched the better.

Deserts are some of our favorite spaces...primeval, uncluttered...as if the very skeleton of a continent lies exposed.

We are particularly fascinated by these regions when Mother Nature decides it's time to show off.

After significant rains in the vast, dessicated hill country of Namaqualand in the early Southern African spring...something otherworldly emerges and the arid, dust strewn desertscapes produce impossible floral colour...the countryside appearing oddly surreal...as if Dali...after sampling LSD...had painted the very landscape around us.

I found myself unable to look away as valley after magnificent, vibrant, shimmering valley unfolded before us.

Our Cape and Namaqualand itinerary is almost at an end. We have reveled in the beauty and majesty of the Cape peninsula and adjacent wine country, her national parks and astounding marine life and last, but by no means least...her evocative botanical diversity.

Wish you were here.

Photo by Simon Wray.

.roode

27/07/2023

We have been on safari constantly and it has been a veritable whirlwind of experiences.

Since May we have curated and guided departures in Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
is just now finishing a private safari in the sandstone and baobab wonderland of Gonarezhou in South Eastern Zimbabwe.

Our final planning for Galapagos next year in March is taking shape...as is another phenomenal adventure in 2025...to India...watch this space!

And yet...East Africa calls to me again.
I fly tomorrow via Nairobi to the foot of Kilimanjaro...to Blixen and Hemingway's Africa...to the astounding grandeur of the Rift Valley Escarpment...where the indomitable Maasai graze their wandering herds.
We go to seek the enormous tuskers in the lost world of Ngorongoro and to revel in the vast Wildebeest throng on the northern Serengeti as they run a gauntlet across the Mara River...avoiding the ever present reptile leviathan giants that wait for them there.

It calls me out...and I must go.

Wish you were here.

Photograph by photography guide extraordinaire Jay Roode .roode

11/06/2023

We have immersed ourselves in the art of the safari across several iconic Southern African wildlife landscapes.

We explored the hill country of Pilanesberg and Madikwe and reveled in those drifting herds and sweeping vistas.

We climbed aboard a King Air yesterday and winged our way northward...across the greasy Limpopo and into the dessicated bushscapes of Mashatu in Botswana.

Here lies an arid savanna stripped bare of excess...a region of exposed sandstone ridges, stark and bloated Baobabs and skeletal Shepherd's Trees.
I am always confounded at how wildlife abounds here in this dusty, Mopane strewn wasteland...and yet it does...with remarkable diversity.

The secret is in the two rivers that bisect the reserve...creating a green and fertile feeding habitat for the various herbivores...and these concentrations in turn draw in a plethora of carnivores seeking and chasing and devouring.

There are Lion here and Spotted Hyena and Cheetah...and in the riparian thickets...deep shadow lands beneath the contorted canopies of ancient Nyalaberry Trees...there are Leopard.

This lithe, rosette spangled assassin snoozed peacefully this morning while digesting her latest kill. The early sun set her glowing...an impossibly beautiful effigy...magnificent...ever so striking and clinically, insanely adept at murder.

Wish you were here.

22/05/2023

We are a dust coated group of safari renegades...we have emerged from the wilderness eden of the Serengeti weary and yet enormously happy.

We rest now on a sprawling coffee plantation high on the Rift Valley escarpment.

How do I put into words all that we have seen? From the legions of ungulates on the move and the various big cats in profusion to the endless, breath-taking vistas...we were held spellbound by it all.

Last night...like Hemingway before me...I lay, listening...homesick for it already.
Two male lions raged on in the darkness as they declared their defiance to the cosmos.

This I know. I left my heart on a lonely hill somewhere on the Serengeti...and it was filled with gratitude...

Wish you were here.

17/05/2023

And so...inevitably...we are back in Northern Tanzania...in the majesty of the Rift Valley where our very profession had its origins more than 120 years ago.

We were held spellbound by the bushlands of Tarangire...her baobabs and elephant herds as enthralling as ever.

Manyara was pure jungle...Blue Monkeys, Silvery cheeked Hornbills and tree climbing Lion were all magnificent to behold.

Today we descended into the diabolical lost world of Ngorongoro. How does one begin to describe the enormity and grandeur of it all?
These tuskers were colossal...and yet were dwarfed by the sheer size of the landscape...the towering walls of the caldera.

Tomorrow...once more...we head for that iconic multitude...on an endless savanna plain the Maasai call Siringet. We seek the heaving, braying, dust coated ungulate throng and the carnivores that chase and devour them.

It calls me out and I must go...

Wish you were here.

23/04/2023

I am back in the elysium fields of my early career...the vast and ever beautiful Kruger lowveld.
I'm guiding Tor and Madeleine Sjodin from Sweden on a private safari...exploring three magnificent and very different reserves. The Sabi Sands, Manyeleti and Klaserie.

We have seen it all and reveled in its majesty...drifting herds of elephant and mud encrusted buffalo...the various lithe and regal antelope species and the startling array of carnivores that chase and devour them.

This sinewy feline had us enthralled in the bronze infused late afternoon as she tried to outflank a bachelor herd of impala.
She emitted light...as if she was spun from its golden thread and her fluid, liquid form held us spellbound...so enormously attractive and yet so disturbingly and emphatically deadly.

Wish you were here.

10/04/2023

I was asked to commit my thoughts on our recent exploration of the Antarctic peninsula to an article for News24...to publicize our latest book...Memoirs of a Safari Guide.

Link to the article below.

https://www.news24.com/life/travel/journey-to-the-edge-what-its-like-to-take-a-trip-to-the-antarctic-peninsula-20230410

We are planning the next Antarctica expedition for early 2025. Watch this space!

It calls me out...and I must go.

05/04/2023

Peter Neville and I were recently interviewed on Watts Involved on Mix FM about our latest book...the crazy and hilarious Memoirs of a Safari Guide.

Below the link to the podcast.

Enjoy...we sure did!

In this episode of Watts Involved, I have special guests Andrew Ray and Peter Neville, discussing their book Memoirs of a Safari Guide. The book is recom…

19/03/2023

It has been nothing short of breathtaking.

We began at the thundering Victoria Falls and moved westward to ply the evocative waterways of the Chobe River.

We then headed into the interior threading the Land Cruiser through thick desert sand and groves of Kalahari Appleleaf in a place called Savuti. Lion, Leopard and Wild Dog held us enthralled in this magnificent and savage wilderness.

We moved further still on barely visible tracks into the heart of Moremi Game Reserve and found the edge of that impossible wetland paradise...the Okavango Delta.

We arrived...windblown and dust coated...in the northern town of Maun. The next day a Cessna Caravan charter flight delivered us to a desert landscape green and verdant from recent rainfall. A vast salt pan teeming with wildlife....drifting legions of Zebra and Wildebeest, pronking Springbok...immaculate Oryx with masked faces and sabre like horns...and these giants...coated in white calciferous mud.
This Elephant bull affected an ethereal glow...as if lit from within...when the setting sun diffused the light and a surreal, otherworldly colour palette changed the appearance of everything it touched.

Botswana...you are indeed beautiful!

Wish you were here.

14/03/2023

We are constantly asked what our favorite African safari destination is and it is an incredibly difficult question to answer.

We revel in the heaving, galloping multitude on the Serengeti during the wildebeest migration.

We are repeatedly stunned by our interactions with the primates who stalk the shadow lands and primordial forests of Uganda.

We love Zimbabwe and Zambia and we are always moved by Namibia's vast and exquisite desertscapes.

Ethiopia and Madagascar's endemic wildlife and ethereal landscapes leave us breathless with awe every single time.

And then...well...then there is Savuti.

Wish you were here.

Rae Safaris

12/03/2023

I am in Botswana guiding well traveled friends and restless adventurers, Dave and Shirley, from Massachusetts USA.

We met up and began the safari in Victoria Falls. The iconic waterfall was spectacular as ever...presenting a churning and tumultuous vision as a bursting Zambezi roars headlong into the chasm below.

We crossed the border and found more splendor on the banks of the Chobe River in Botswana.

This heaving behemoth...all black and glistening...as if carved from obsidian...rose up from the water...an impossible colossus...enormous and breathtaking...to find and feed on the various aquatic plants attached to islands flooded by the rising river.

Wish you were here.

27/02/2023

If you have a moment this evening...tune in to Watts Involved on Mix FM at 8pm South Africa standard time to hear Prof. Peter Neville and I interviewed about our latest book: Memoirs of a Safari Guide.

There will be mayhem and a chuckle or two.

https://mixfm.co.za/

10/02/2023

There is something powerful about working alongside passionate people in wilderness landscapes.

When those people are also your children...the joy and gratitude are tenfold!

Here's a summary of our adventures in 2022.
8 countries and three continents.
What a year it was!

Isn't it about time you joined our safari family?

2023 is going to be epic.

Into the Wild...music and lyrics by the one and only LP.

Wish you were here.

Rae Safaris

2022 was filled with the very grandest of adventure.2023 is here and the hunger for wild spaces has returned. New frontiers await. Join us as we seek those d...

31/12/2022

And yet again we stand at this familiar precipice of time...looking back at the year we have navigated and at the same time moving forward into the swirling unknown of a New Year.

I'm not someone who is always comfortable being filmed or photographed...I was unaware at the moment this image was taken by a friend on-board MS Seaventure just a few weeks ago.

We were embarking the port city of Ushuaia en route through the Beagle Channel and onward toward the chaos of the Drake Passage and the surreal and beautiful ice-scapes of the Antarctic peninsula beyond.

The photo caught me in that moment...immersed in the intensity of certain adventure...at the threshold of something new...something unknown...wild...remote.
The delicious promise of yet another frontier and all the delights one hopes to discover.

Shackleton's words echoed in my mind in the moment that camera shutter snapped.
"By endurance...we conquer."

Happy 2023 everyone...may it indeed be filled with adventure.

It calls me out...and I must go.

Wish you were here.