An African safari can be a dusty bus ride through Kenya, a series of jeep excursions through the Serengeti, or a stay at a series of posh spas with only the occasional foray out into nature. If you’ve traveled a lot, you may have lost interest in this type of vacation. In fact, you may be wondering if you will ever again feel awed by nature. A handful of companies are still striving to prove you wrong, either by making their treks more remote or by designing add-on experiences that are one of a kind. These five safaris could get your heart racing and make the long trip to Africa worth every moment.


African Queen

A river cruise is the ideal way to navigate the Chobe River in Botswana, but the Zambezi Queen, a three-level, 150-foot-long vessel, is the first luxury riverboat offering overnight tours there. For two or three days you can ply this river to view elephants, giraffes, and the small antelope known as puku. At night, you’ll stay in one of 14 luxury cabins, each of which has floor-to-ceiling windows and expansive views of the river. The company provides smaller boats for short excursions on the river, and it also leads short, land-based treks.

The owners stress that this is an eco-friendly experience. The utilities aboard the boat are designed to conserve water and electricity. Solar panels heat all the water, and used water is stored in tanks instead of being disgorged into the river. The boat itself was designed to minimize its impact on the ecosystem. It has no propellers; it moves by jet propulsion, which allows it to travel through very shallow water with minimum disruption to the riverbed. At night, the motor switches to a silent, power-saving mode that lets you fall asleep to the sounds of the bush.

What if a seven- or 10-day safari isn’t quite enough time to spend in Africa? What if you want a smaller, more intimate experience? Many companies have begun offering trip extensions—additional adventures tacked onto the original safari to make the trip more meaningful.

One of these adventures is offered by Thomson Safaris, as an extension to its Luxury Lodge Safari tour of northern Tanzania. The trip extension gives you the chance to visit a beachside camp with six thatch-roofed huts, accessible only by a charter flight followed by a boat ride. You can spend four or five days there and hike into the forest to see the world’s largest community of chimpanzees. The chimps aren’t shy; in fact, they’re quite social. They’ve been studied by one group of scientists for many years, and as a result they are not afraid of people. When not observing the monkeys (or the scientists), you have ample opportunity to fish and swim, bird-watch, or just lounge on the beach.

Instead of flying in a plane or riding on a riverboat to see Africa’s rarest wildlife, you can travel the old-fashioned way: on horseback, with Okavango Horse Safaris. The company leads you across the Okavango Delta, a grassy floodplain in Botswana that can be covered in water of varying depths. The Okavango tour includes two hours of riding per day through marshy lands, and according to general manager Sarah Humble, guests enjoy the experience in part because, on horseback, they feel more attached to their surroundings instead of being just observers. "The game react well, because they see the guests as being part of nature, too," she says.

You visit three different camps during the 10-day safari. Each has six guest tents that sit atop risers so that they remain dry, and each camp is located under a canopy of trees. One camp features tree houses. Humble says that elephants, drawn to the nearby Mokolwane palm trees, frequent this camp.

For 25 years, Natural Habitat Adventures has been hosting trips in remote areas of the world, and their flagship trip is a 13-day tour of Botswana for groups no larger than eight people. The tour makes several stops, first at camps along the Chobe River. There you have the chance to see hippos, storks, and crocodiles from a canoe or during a riverboat cruise. At an inland camp, you’ll trek to private, ground-level verandas from which you can observe cheetahs and leopards. During night drives, you can encounter caracal cats that hunt only after sunset.

According to Rick Guthke, an adventure specialist for Natural Habitat Adventures, this trip brings you closer to nature than do most safaris because the camps are located in such remote areas. Although some of the camps are permanent, the company can create tented camps on the fly in response to the animals’ migrations.

"Some companies invest in long wine lists and chandeliers. We invest in creating tours that visit far more remote areas than most companies, and hiring the best tour guides," says Guthke. In some cases, the tents are erected as you travel to the site. And yet, these camps are still fully staffed with a chef, waiter, and cleaning staff. Guthke stresses that the company hires guides who have at least six years of full-time experience and who are both savvy and charismatic. A few of these guides are so well known that they headline their own tours.

If you can’t imagine any vacation experience—even a safari—without a round of golf, Legend Golf & Safari Resort has the answer. This South African resort is set on 54,000 acres that encompass five ecosystems and are home to some of the world’s only white lions. From the resort, you can take short excursions by helicopter or horseback or on foot to explore the area and view the wildlife.

Most people come for the golf and consider the wildlife a sideline. The resort has 18-hole courses and one additional hole, known as the Extreme 19th. To get to the tee, you have to board a helicopter and fly up 1,300 feet to the top of Hanglip Mountain. From the tee, the green, shaped like the continent of Africa, is another 400 yards away. It’s a par-3 hole, but at that altitude, the ball carries really well.