The Long Way Home

Follow along with our co-founder on her spectacular homecoming safari from Cape Town to Victoria Falls to the Okavango Delta.

May 27, 2026

I left Southern Africa when I was fifteen years old, stuffed into an airplane with the grief of a teenager who doesn't yet have the words for what she's losing.

In the years that followed, I went back — of course I went back — but always in the compressed, apologetic format of a two-week trip that ended just as my nervous system was beginning to exhale. You know the feeling. You've barely stopped bracing and it's time to leave.

Then our girls grew up, and miraculously, I had three months to revisit Southern Africa, deeply this time. The trip included quality time with friends, epic camps and wildlife, and a chance to honor the memories of my parents in a way I’m sure they would appreciate.

Cape Town: Fresh Eyes

We rented a house on the slopes of Table Mountain with our friends Emily and Randall — their first time here — which meant I got to see the city again through the best possible lens: someone else's astonishment.

We rode the cable car up Table Mountain on a day of ridiculous clarity, the car rotating slowly while Cape Town fell away beneath us. At the top, we scrambled over rocks hunting for daasies in the crevices. These cute little creatures are, against all reason, the elephant's closest living relative, a fact I shared with Randall three times because it delights me so. The views were frankly absurd. The Atlantic on one side, False Bay on the other. We rewarded ourselves with cold beers in the afternoon sun, and as we descended in the cable car at dusk, Cape Town – the homeplace of my maternal grandparents – lit up beneath us.

Other highlights: A magical morning at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Did you know that Cape Town is the epicenter of one of the world’s six floral kingdoms? We explored the Constantia Winelands, where the Southern Hemisphere's oldest wine valley hides, elegant and entirely unbothered, in the folds of the mountain, just minutes from the city. We shared a charcuterie board at Buitenverwachting Wine Farm that I think about more than I should. We explored Kalk Bay, Boulders Beach, with all of the Cape Penguins in their comical glory, looking grumpy except when surfing. I have been going there since I was a child with my family, and it never disappoints. We lunched in Noordhoek and then drove Chapman's Peak Drive, which is one of those incredibly scenic roads that makes you feel as if you’re soaring like a gull instead of riding in a car.

On one sweltering evening in the grip of a genuine Cape Town heatwave, we grazed the Oranjezicht City Farm Market. We moved from stall to stall in the warm dark, eating things we couldn't identify, buying things we didn't need, staying far longer than sensible people would. No regrets!

Zimbabwe: The River That Remembers Everything

We flew north to the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls and drove to a jetty where the Great Plains safari team was waiting with a boat. The Zambezi was running at levels not seen in over fifty years. We drifted through a scene that felt prehistoric, with hippos surfacing and disappearing, crocodiles doing their crocodile thing of being everywhere and nowhere, the water enormous and slow.

"Five tents on the Zambezi, just upstream from the thunder of Victoria Falls."

We stayed at Great Plains’ Mpala Jena Private Villas in Zambezi National Park, upstream from the falls. It is hands down the finest UNCHARTED Outpost on the Zimbabwean side of the river. The staff had that rare quality of warmth that feels entirely unrehearsed, and we felt at home right away. The decor was just gorgeous, and we all agreed that we could easily live here!

Our guide was Lovemore, a Zimbabwean whose knowledge of the bush was matched only by his gift for knowing when not to talk. One morning, he took us on foot toward a herd of Cape Buffalo. We spent ninety minutes in the long grass, stalking. It sounds dangerous because it was a little. But mostly it was just acutely, electrically alive.

On our last evening, with Chip and our dear friends beside me, I scattered my parents' ashes in the middle of the Zambezi, in the channel where Zimbabwe and Zambia share a border. In the river that had shaped them, I felt once again the currents that set me on my way.

"In the river that had shaped them, I felt once again the currents that set me on my way."

The Okavango: Biblical, in All the Best Ways

We flew into the Delta in conditions that felt like the Old Testament was being actively filmed. The entire region was underwater. An inland sea of papyrus and channels, islands and flooded plains stretching to every horizon. First stop, Duba Plains, another Great Plains camp. It, too, was stellar. In less than twenty-four hours, we saw: two lionesses with five cubs; a mother rhino nursing a calf of impressive size; a female leopard who materialized around a termite mound at the precise moment the rhino arrived, the two animals regarding each other across two feet of mud with the mutual surprise of people who think they have the same seat on an airplane; a hyena family whose pups pressed their magnificent, absurd faces against the vehicle grill as though conducting a safety inspection; and, as we returned to camp in the rain, a large male lion standing on the bridge to camp like a bouncer who had decided this was, simply, his bridge now.

We transferred to sister camp Duba Explorers by boat, in full-blinding rain, wearing ponchos, howling and laughing as you do when the situation is objectively absurd, and you're absolutely fine with it. The pathways between tents stood in a foot of water. We walked barefoot through the mud while the staff waited at the mess with towels and dry slippers. The food at Explorers was, implausibly, the best of the entire trip — Ottolenghi-inflected, super fresh, served in the middle of a flooded delta. How?

“Flooded plains, roaring lions, and unforgettable Delta mornings.”

One evening, I stepped outside, and a family of warthogs detonated out of the undergrowth directly at me, rocketed through the kitchen boma, and disappeared into their burrow beneath the camp office — which, I was told cheerfully, is the only place on the island where they're safe from leopards and lions. Clever little piggies!

"A large male lion standing on the bridge to camp like a bouncer who had decided this was, simply, his bridge now."

Sitatunga: The Island That Slows Time

We arrived at Sitatunga Private Island Camp by helicopter, banking low over the floodplains as the reeds opened beneath us into an island of papyrus and water lilies. It's a different kind of safari experience — less big-five theatre, more the slow, undramatic magic of a place that doesn't need to prove anything.

We spent our days on boats threading through narrow channels while kingfishers exploded in turquoise arcs across the bow. Four of us shared a two-bedroom villa with a veranda overlooking a lagoon, the color of steel and sky. Massages were had. A pedicure was administered. This is also Africa. Anyone who tells you otherwise is leaving out important information. The need to slow down on safari is, in my opinion, not a choice but an absolute must, and there is no better place to do it than at Sitatunga!

Then there was the afternoon that our friend Jill headed out to go tiger fishing, and a staff member down the path suddenly went very still and began waving both arms in the universal language of do not take another step. She looked up. Behind her: a bull elephant, ears fanned wide, mock-charging. She turned and ran back to her tent — I guess she never read the book “Whatever You Do, Don’t Run,” Peter Allison’s hilarious account of life as a guide hereabouts. She made it to the boat and caught her first tiger fish. There were no further elephant incidents here. One thing is for sure: the bush is never, ever boring.

“An intimate island escape hidden deep within the Okavango Delta.”

"We spent our days on boats threading through narrow channels while kingfishers exploded in turquoise arcs across the bow."

Zarafa Camp: Uninvited Houseguests

Zarafa belongs to a bygone, more romantic era. Wide floodplains, the Selinda Spillway beyond, a landscape so composed it feels curated by someone with exceptional taste.

Our first evening was what guides diplomatically call "quieter," which means the large predators declined to perform, and you redirect your attention to everything else. The world's most extraordinary animals, simply being. An iridescent bird is landing on a branch. A dung beetle conducting its baffling, determined business. The way light changes through the trees at four in the afternoon. The safari is never actually about the checklist. It's about absorbing everything that makes up the whole.

"Copper baths, big cats, and a landscape curated by someone with exceptional taste."

The following day made up for any perceived subtlety. I had stayed behind in my tent to work — even in paradise, the inbox beckons — when I looked up from my laptop to find an elephant standing at the end of my deck. Five metres away. Just standing there, in the trees, absolutely enormous, utterly unbothered. I called the others. They came running. We sat by my outdoor shower and watched a family of five elephants spend an unhurried hour moving through the trees around my tent, peeling bark, stripping branches, ignoring us with what felt almost like courtesy. An elephant family as houseguests. The inbox could wait.

That afternoon, the rest of our gang had had an amazing game drive and were headed back to camp. They were only about five minutes away, but had to cross a body of water, when Kristen jokingly said, “Imagine if there was a hippo in this water,” and at that precise moment in the dark, out popped a massive hippo blocking their path. The only thing to be done was to retreat. With their guide clutching the gear stick, steering wheel, and the spotlight like a circus juggler, they made it out and then had to backtrack 45 minutes around to return to camp, exhilarated, dirty, and just in time for dinner.

"An elephant standing at the end of my deck. Five metres away. Just standing there, in the trees, absolutely enormous, utterly unbothered."

Selinda: The Best Sundowners on Earth

The boat transfer from Zarafa carried us through the flooded Selinda Spillway to Selinda Camp. With its soaring thatched A-frame and tented rooms facing out onto the most abundant game country, it was, without question, my favorite camp of the trip.

We had barely arrived when the impala started alarm-calling outside my tent. That staccato bark means something is here. Emily saw it first: a lioness, crouched. We scrambled into the vehicle, looped around, and found two females — both injured, we think from a warthog encounter — with three cubs. We spent forty-five minutes with them. Then we left them in peace to hunt a meal for their young ones.

"Elephant herds, wild dogs, and sundowners on the Selinda Spillway."

What followed was one of those game drives that simply refuses to end: zebra moving in columns through late grass, wildebeest in their eternal melancholy, jackals with their quick, intelligent faces, a lone hyena, elephants stripping mopane bark for the sweet inner sap, and teenagers knocking over saplings with the casual destructiveness of all teenagers everywhere. Emily caught it all on film - so lucky to have such a sensational photographer as a part of our crew!

The light was nearly gone when our guide Dollar — a bushman from the Kalahari, and yes, his name was Dollar, and I will carry it with me always — stopped the vehicle as we left the elephants behind. He pressed his palms together and looked toward them.

"Thank you, elephants," he said quietly. "For letting us spend this time with you."

I have been going on safari for a long time. Never have I wanted to capture a comment in my notebook more precisely than I did at that moment.

And then, because the best hosts do this, we followed a trail of lights through the dark and found a sundowner station laid out on a lagoon. Full bar. Low safari tables. Smoked salmon, crispy chicken bites, biltong and olives, propped on overladen tables on Persian rugs and lit by lanterns and what appeared to be the entire contents of a well-stocked cellar, arranged in the middle of the wilderness under the last color of a Botswana sky. We sang " Happy Birthday" to Randall. He looked at all of us, and then at this improbable, ridiculous, beautiful scene, and for a long moment said absolutely nothing. Speechless.

"He looked at all of us, and then at this improbable, ridiculous, beautiful scene, and for a long moment said absolutely nothing. Speechless."

Getting Out: The Bush Takes Care of Its Own

The final days brought a medical complication — Randall's ears were blocked and in serious trouble. Great Plains arranged everything: the pickup, the access to Maun's well-equipped lodge lounge, the doctor who informed him with characteristic bush-country directness that his eardrums would have burst within the week if he hadn't come in. They were treated. He was fine.

The five others of our party flew to Johannesburg, on the way back to the States. As I flew south to Cape Town to continue my long stay, the runway fell away, and the Delta opened beneath me — all that extraordinary flooded world, the highest water in fifty years, the silver channels and the drowned papyrus and the animals making their adjustments to a changed but unbroken landscape.

On this most memorable safari, it was emotional to have stood in the middle of the Zambezi River to say goodbye to my parents. Africa gives back what you bring to it — a loving grief, wonder, humor, and attention. I brought all of it this time. On this long-overdue pilgrimage, it gave me everything in return.