By the end of our time in Southern Africa, we thought we were safari gurus. I mean, what first-time Africa travelers go on over 40 game drives in one visit? From Chobe National Park and the Okavango Delta, to Kruger Park proper and the surrounding game reserves, we thought we knew the drill. Then, we went to Tanzania, and our whole concept of how a safari works went straight out the window. There are some big differences, and advantages and disadvantages to both. Here is a little comparison:

  • Lodge-centered vs. Operator-centered – This is the biggest single difference. Down South, your entire safari experience is organized by, and executed through the lodge or camp where you are staying. Your game drives happen early in the morning and late in the afternoon, with the hot hours of mid-day spent lounging around the lodge. Most of the time, you do loops around the vicinity of the lodge, so location is paramount. Generally, it is the lodge’s vehicles that are used for the game drives, and the lodge employs the guides and trackers. Up North, however, you’re constantly on the move, and the lodges and camps are simply a place to spend a night or two. The safari experience is organized and executed through a tour operator, who arranges your guide and decides what camps and lodges to stay in. Game drives may last all day, with a significant commute between parks being your down time.
  • Vehicle Style – Down South, most game drives cruise loops within a 20 mile radius of the lodge. Because you’re always on roads within the reserve or park, and because you want to have the most intimate animal encounters possible, safaris here use open-sided Land Cruisers. The only thing between you and Simba is a few feet of open air. Up North, you spend a lot more time in your safari vehicle. To hit all the parks along the Northern Safari Circuit (Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara, Tarangire), you’ve got to be on the move every couple days, and travel between parks can take a number of hours through urban and rural environments. For this reason, you can’t cruise around in the open-sided jeeps of the South, you need a Land Cruiser that is fully enclosed. But to get good photos of the animals, you also need a window-less environment. The solution – pop-top Land Cruisers.

Pop-tops up north

Open sided down south

  • Fences – There is a lot of controversy about enclosing protected areas throughout Africa. Some argue it’s beneficial, and allows for better protection of the animals. Others think that animals should be free to roam as they always have, even if that means sometimes roaming into a village. Down South, just about ever protected area is fenced. Now, these fences might enclose parks the size of small US states, but if you walk far enough in any direction, you’ll hit an electrified fence. Up North, they don’t seem to believe in fences, and animals up there are constantly on the move. It’s actually the migratory patterns of the animals up North that prevent many lodge-centered operations from being sustainable – only certain times of year are animals abundant in their vicinity. To deal with this migratory challenge, they’ve developed my favorite safari accommodation – mobile camps: Temporary tented camps that pick up and move every couple months with the flow of the animals.

Mobile tented camps up north

  • Vehicle Concentration – Down South, all of the game reserves and parks have strict rules on the number of safari jeeps that can be viewing a particular animal or group of animals at once – generally no more than 3. This is easy to enforce, as all jeeps belong to lodges within the reserve, and all lodges must follow reserve rules (for their own benefit). Unfortunately, up North there is no limit to the number of jeeps at any particular sighting, so it’s not uncommon to see well over a dozen jeeps looking on a pride of lions.

Line of vehicles to see a leopard in Serengeti

  • Animals – Diversity and Quantity – How could I leave this for last? You can find the Big 5 both North and South, but each region also has its own set of unique fauna. The big difference, however, is that there seem to be a much higher density of animals up North. We went 10 days in Botswana before we saw a lion, and after 40 game drives down South, we were up to 12 or so. In Tanzania, we saw 44 lions over 5 days. Then there are the thousands upon thousands of wildebeest and zebras that make up the Great Migration. You can see all the cool animals in both places, you’ll just see more of them up North.

How many do you count in this photo?

So, after all that, which is better? Hard to say. The lodge-centered safaris, open vehicles, and low vehicle concentration all favor the South. But, the lack of fences and shear volume of animals make the North pretty special. Either way, you can’t go wrong.

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