Everyone frames a South African safari as the ultimate honeymoon destination. I’d like to respectfully disagree. It’s romantic, remote, a little untamed…and hey, I get it. I’m sure safaris are incredible that way. I’d argue to go with your girlfriends first. Not instead. First.
I’ve had my fair share of girls’ trips. Nashville, Austin, long weekends in New York, where I spent far too much and remembered far too little. Those trips are great, and I wouldn’t change them for anything. But there’s something about choosing a destination somewhere genuinely unexpected. Somewhere that requires a 16-hour flight and a certain willingness to sleep in a tent, while, come 2 a.m., baboons conduct their personal business directly above your head — that changes the whole experience. It stops being a girls’ trip as a concept and starts being something you actually talk about for years to come.
We went in 2019, the four of us, right before wedding season swallowed our calendar whole. Looking back, the timing was almost accidental, but it turned out to be exactly right.
Cape Town, South Africa
We had a secret weapon on this trip: one of us worked at a travel agency. Which meant that for once in our lives, the research was done, the days were planned, and all we had to do was show up. I cannot overstate what a gift this is. Especially when the itinerary looks like ours did.
We started in Muizenberg, coffee in hand, watching surfers ride the waves before the day had fully started. From there, off to Kalk Bay, where we met local fishermen on the docks who talked us into trying biltong (which I respect a great deal more than I actually enjoy). Things took a turn for the better in Simon’s Town, where we kayaked with penguins at Boulder’s Beach. We rounded out the day at Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope, hiking and standing at the southernmost edge of the continent.
Our guide was a local guy, roughly our age, a surfer bro, and he seemed genuinely entertained by us rather than just tolerating us — which, given our collective energy level, was saying something. He was the perfect person to introduce us to the magic that is Cape Town.
We ended the day the way Cape Town demands, with a G&T. I’ll preface by saying I’m not a big gin drinker. But G&Ts are currency in Cape Town, and something about the specific combination of the heat, the day we’d had, the four of us at a table thousands of miles from home, made it taste just right. To this day, whenever I see one, I’m briefly transported back there.
Franschhoek, South Africa
The Franschhoek Wine Tram is either a stroke of genius or a very responsible person’s worst nightmare, depending on your disposition. You board, you ride between vineyards, you taste, you reboard, you do it again. It is, structurally, a machine designed to make you have a good time. We leaned in fully.
The specifics of that day are, I’ll be honest, a little soft around the edges. What I remember clearly is laughing. A lot of laughing. We made friends with strangers on the tram, and somewhere in the middle of it all, someone took a photo (the four of us plus our new friends on the back) that remains one of my favorite pictures in existence. We were twenty-six with nowhere else to be, and absolutely, completely present.
Kruger National Park, South Africa
By the time we got to Kruger, we had already established ourselves as a group that attracts chaos. So it felt appropriate that within our first hour, a monkey wandered into our tent and stole my friend’s Adderall. There was nothing to do but laugh. And did we ever, left breathless with (happy) tears streaking down our faces. Seven years later, I still can’t recap it all without laughing.
That night, sometime around 2 a.m., we were woken up by what sounded like something dying directly above our tent. Screaming, thrashing, general mayhem. We lay there completely still, absolutely convinced this was how it ended. Turns out it was baboons… mating. We didn’t find that out until morning — at which point we lost it all over again, because of course we did, and because Kruger had already made clear it was going to be that kind of place: equal parts unpredictable and unforgettable.
Come to find out, the South African safari game drives were no different. Two a day, sunrise and golden hour, with our own driver who became a real friend over those four days. We saw all of the Big Five: lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, and cape buffalo (oh my!) At one point, our driver was telling us a story about getting a flat tire out in the bush — the particular vulnerability of being stranded, surrounded by wildlife, with nowhere to go. Then we got a flat tire. Naturally.
Each golden hour drive ended the same way; the truck stopped somewhere out in the open, light bites and G&Ts passed around as the sun went down. Just the four of us and the quiet of the bush, watching the sun go down. No agenda, nowhere to be, nothing to figure out.
Go before. Go after. Just book the South African Safari.
If you’re in your mid-20s and the weddings haven’t started yet, go now. Before the bachelorettes and the baby showers and the group chats fracture into fifteen different life stages. There is a particular window where your closest friends are still largely available, still a little untethered, still up for something that requires a 16-hour flight and a tent. Use it.
And if you’re in your mid-30s and that season is finally slowing down, this is your moment too. Plan the trip you kept saying you’d take once things calmed down. Things have calmed down. Book it.
As for me? I’d love to go back to South Africa with my husband someday because I’m sure the rumors about safari honeymoons are true, too. But I’m so glad my first time was this way: in a tent with three of my closest friends, howling with laughter, with 4 a.m nights and 6 a.m. wake-up calls. There’s a specific silliness that lives in close female friendships that can’t be replicated any other way, and some places deserve to be experienced through that version of yourself first.
Until next time, South Africa.
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