We’ve been in the business of planning spectacular trips for LGBTQ+ guests for a long while now. The one thing we’ve learnt is that difference is part of our travellers’ identities, part of Africa’s identity, and sure as hell part of ours. With that much variety, why should every safari feel the same?
From the moment we start planning your trip, “difference” is what decides the room, reserve and the structure of your days. The ingredients that shape your travel style are formed from what you want to see, how you want to stay, your social appetite and how keen you are to move around often. One of our recent guests was clear: they wanted the bushveld romance and immediacy of a canvas camp. Another was far more drawn to a lodge whose architecture left them asking the only reasonable question: how on earth did they build such a masterpiece here?
The beauty of our guests - and hopefully you will be soon - is that some will cross oceans to soak in the African bush around a leopard sighting. While others prefer a landscape that looks like it belongs to another planet. There is no wrong and there is no right, there is merely “your style.”
Wildlife sightings or dramatic landscapes?
Some travellers arrive with a leopard at the top of the list. For them, we begin with a wildlife-rich private reserve, excellent guiding and enough nights for luck to work.
Credit: Mowani Mountain Camp.
Damaraland gives you both in one frame: elephants moving across open plains beneath granite outcrops.
Another guest travelled through Rwanda, Cape Town, the Sabi Sand, Victoria Falls and Namibia. After all of that, Sossusvlei was the place they described as “like being on another planet”.
If Sossusvlei is the image you cannot shake, the landscape leads: Namibia’s dunes, Makgadikgadi’s salt pans or the scale of the Kalahari.
Want both? Then we protect enough nights for each rather than racing between them.
Luxury under canvas or bold architecture?
At Zarafa Camp, four suites of more than 100 square metres sit under flowing canvas, each with a copper bath, private plunge pool and expansive deck overlooking Botswana’s Zibadianja Lagoon. The result is unmistakably a tented safari, with the scale and finish of a grand hotel suite. Take our word for it, canvas changes the atmosphere, not the standard.
Credit: Zarafa Camp.
Silvan Safari takes a more architectural approach. Its six suites are individually designed around the indigenous trees surrounding the lodge. Private plunge pools, expressive colour and commissioned artwork give each suite its own character, while the riverbed remains part of the view.
Zarafa offers the romance of a true under-canvas safari; Silvan, architectural elegance. Decide which one you would rather return to after the afternoon drive. “Both” is a perfectly acceptable answer, by the way.
Shared dining or your own table?
At many intimate camps, guides may join guests for dinner. That gives you time to ask about the tracks, behaviour and smaller details that passed quickly on the drive.
Credit: Mowani Mountain Camp.
Choose the shared table if you want more time with the guide and other guests. Choose your own if dinner is part of the honeymoon.
For queer couples, comfort at the table is not something we leave to chance. We curate lodges where your relationship is understood and welcomed without explanation.
The useful question is whether dinner should introduce you to the camp or give the two of you the evening to yourselves. Tell us which you prefer. We will recommend a lodge that can work that way and confirm any private-dining arrangements before you travel.
One deep destination or several contrasting stops?
The useful question is not how much you can fit in. It is how often you want to unpack.
Credit: Mowani Mountain Camp.
One of our guests travelled for sixteen days across five lodges and the Zambezi Queen. Afterwards, she recommended twelve days, four lodges and a few days of beach. We remember her advice whenever an itinerary starts collecting stops faster than it collects time in them.
Another guest has returned to Inyati Game Lodge in the Sabi Sand seventeen times since 2008. That is a very different travel style, and an equally useful brief. See what we mean about our guests having completely different lives?
Several stops bring contrast: city, bush, waterfall, desert or island. Stay longer and your guide learns whether you stop for every bird or follow the leopard tracks; the team learns the table you prefer; and you spend fewer hours in transit.
The answer determines how many flights we book and how often you unpack. Regardless of whether the third transfer sounds like admin or an exciting adventure, we want to know every little detail.
Spend more on the suite or the experiences?
At some point, we ask where the extra spend will matter more: inside the suite or beyond it.
Credit: Londolozi.
It might be the larger suite with the private pool. It could be a private safari vehicle, a specialist guide, a helicopter over the Delta, a night under the stars or one more day in the place you came all this way to see.
If you are planning long lunches by the pool and a proper afternoon in the suite, the room justifies its share of the budget. If you will be out from first coffee to sunset, the right lodge may matter more than its highest suite category. Put the difference towards the experiences.
When you meet with your Out2Africa consultant for the first time, do mention what you would regret missing. That is usually where the investment should go.
Finish with city energy or an intimate beach?
How you want to finish also affects the safari: where it sits in the route, how many nights it gets and how much energy the final days ask of you.
After safari, do you want one more dinner reservation or no shoes until the flight home?
Credit: andBeyond.
Finish in Cape Town and the trip ends with restaurants, galleries, cocktails, shopping and another city day full of adventure. Finish in Mozambique and the decisions get simpler: swim before lunch or after, book the dive or stay on the daybed.
Give either ending enough time. Cape Town deserves more than a farewell dinner; Benguerra demands taking it easy for a couple of days.
What these choices change
Your answers work together. A traveller who wants wildlife, canvas-led luxury and shared dinners may prefer an intimate camp where the boma is part of the evening. A traveller drawn to architecture, privacy and longer afternoons at the lodge needs a different room, dining rhythm and use of the budget.
Credit: Tanda Tula.
This is where travel style becomes a useful safari brief. Reserve, lodge, dining style, budget and pace all start to take shape.
Speak to our Travel Experts and tell us which answers came easily and which ones started a small debate over dinner. We will use them to choose the route, lodge and pace.
