A day on safari, hour by hour

The shape of a safari day has not changed in thirty years. Two drives, one hot middle, and a slow long evening. What has changed is what guests now expect to do with the hours in between, and our short answer is: less than you think.

Here is the day, hour by hour.

5:15am, the knock at the door

Someone walks through camp before first light and knocks gently on each door. At some lodges it is a guide, at some a member of the housekeeping team, at one in the Selinda it is a man named Kabelo who has been doing the same wake-up since 2006. The knock is followed by a quiet "good morning" and the sound of footsteps moving on to the next tent.

The room is dark and cold. The canvas, if you are in a tent, has dew on the inside of the screen. There is a kettle on the side table and either a small jar of instant coffee or, if you are at a serious lodge, a French press. You drink half a cup standing up, in pyjamas, looking at nothing.

5:45am, coffee on the bonnet

Layers go on. Fleece, beanie, scarf if it is July. The vehicle is parked at the entrance to the lodge with the headlights still on and the guide unloading rifles, blankets, and a flask the size of a small artillery shell. There is a tray on the bonnet of the Land Cruiser with hot rusks, a thermos of filter coffee, hot chocolate for anyone who needs it, and milk in a small jug.

You stand in the dark and drink the coffee. Other guests filter out. Nobody talks much. The bush is making the noises it makes at the edge of dawn: francolins starting up, a hyena somewhere closing out its night, the impala alarm-call to a leopard moving back to a tree. The guide listens to each of these and adjusts where he intends to drive.

6:00am, first drive

The vehicle leaves camp as the sky is just starting to turn from black to grey. Headlights off as soon as there is enough light to see. The first thirty minutes is cold and the blanket the guide handed you is genuinely necessary. Your eyes adjust and you start to see.

This is the best wildlife window of the day. The cats have been hunting through the night and are still active, walking towards water or shade. The herbivores are moving from their overnight cover into the open ground to feed. The birds are at peak activity. The light, between 6 and 7am, is the light photographers fly across the world for.

A good drive is unhurried. The guide stops at fresh tracks, reads them, decides whether to follow. The tracker, on a seat bolted to the front of the vehicle just above the bumper, points at things you would never see: a chameleon on a branch, a leopard cub's drag mark in sand, the way a single broken twig tells you a kudu came through ninety minutes ago. You watch a herd of elephant cross a clearing. You watch a leopard descend a tree. You watch nothing for twenty minutes and find that you do not mind.

9:30am, bush breakfast

Around 9:30 the guide pulls up under a tree, often a marula or a leadwood, and the tracker swings the cooler box off the back. Coffee again, this time stronger and with more rusks. Sometimes a full cooked breakfast brought out by the kitchen team in a separate vehicle: bacon, eggs done to order on a small portable burner, fresh bread, fruit. We have eaten breakfast on the edge of the Sand River with two giraffe drinking thirty metres downstream. The bread tasted significantly better than usual.

10:30am, back at the lodge

You return to the lodge between 10 and 11. The day is now warm. Brunch is laid out on the deck. Most guests make a serious lunch of brunch and then the day opens up.

What happens next is the part that most first-time guests get wrong. They have flown a long way, they paid a lot, they want to do things. The lodge wants them to do nothing.

A nap, in the warmth of mid-morning, after a 5am wake and a four-hour drive, is one of the better things in human life. The sound of the bush at 11am is dove-call and cicada and not much else. Some guests swim. Some read on the deck. Some sit in the camp's library if it has one. The good lodges have built around the assumption that guests will want to do as little as possible during the heat.

A spa treatment, if the lodge offers one, fits beautifully into this window.

1:00pm, lunch

Lunch is laid late, around 1 or 1:30. It tends to be lighter than brunch, often a salad-and-protein affair, sometimes a small braai. Wine appears at most lodges; some guests drink, most don't.

After lunch the heat is at its worst. Between 2 and 3pm, no game is moving and no people should be either. We genuinely encourage another nap.

3:30pm, afternoon tea

Around 3:30 the lodge pulls together a small tea: proper cake, scones with jam and cream, sandwiches if you are hungry, fresh coffee. Guests gather on the main deck in casual clothes and the energy in camp lifts again. The vehicles are being loaded. The guides reconvene with their daily plan.

4:00pm, second drive

The second drive leaves around 4. The first hour is the hottest the vehicle gets all day, especially in October when the bush is bone dry and the ground reflects the sun straight back up. By 5pm the temperature drops perceptibly. By 5:45 the light is gold.

The afternoon drive is structured around the sundowner. The guide is reading the country, picking which sighting to invest time in, but he is also calculating where he wants to be when the sun goes. We have had sundowners on the edge of pans, on a rocky outcrop, beside a flooded channel with hippos grunting twenty metres away, on a dirt road with a herd of elephant feeding parallel to us at thirty metres.

6:15pm, sundowners

The vehicle stops in a safe open area. The cooler box opens. Gin and tonics, beers, soft drinks, a small spread of biltong and nuts and biscuits with cheese. You stand outside the vehicle, which is always slightly disorientating the first time. The guide watches the bush. You watch the sky.

The sun goes down in southern Africa in roughly fifteen minutes. There is a long, slow burn of orange and pink that begins around 6 and finishes by 6:20 in winter, slightly later in summer. After it goes the temperature drops fast and the cold returns within minutes.

6:30pm, night drive

The drive home is in the dark, with a spotlight. The tracker scans for eyeshine. This is when the smaller cats come out: civet, genet, sometimes a serval if you are lucky, occasionally a leopard. Owls fly. Springhares jump. The vehicle lurches over the ruts the morning's elephant herd dug.

Night drives are not allowed in Kruger National Park. They are allowed in most private reserves and in the parks of Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania.

7:30pm, back in camp

You return between 7 and 8pm. The lodge has lit the lanterns. The boma fire is going. Drinks are poured. Dinner is served at 8: three courses, properly, sometimes around a single long table where guests and managers sit together, sometimes at separate tables with the option to join the manager if you want to.

The conversation at the dinner table is the part of safari most guests remember best. The day has been long and slow, the food is good, the wine is local, the staff are unhurried. By 10pm most guests are in bed.

What changes

Different countries shift the timings slightly. Tanzania starts later (6:30am wake) because the equator gives less seasonal light variation. Zambia in walking-safari country swaps the morning drive for a four-hour walk. The Okavango concessions split mokoro and vehicle time across the two daily slots. Family lodges shorten the morning drive and offer kids a bush activity in the middle of the day instead of a nap.

What does not change is the shape. Wake in the dark. Drive in the cool. Eat in the warm. Sleep in the heat. Drive in the gold. Eat in the dark. Sleep again.

We have been working in this shape for twenty years and it still feels designed correctly.

The bush has been expecting you.