About Bushbuck Safaris

It is now 20 years since Bushbuck was first conceived over an excellent dinner in the bush in Botswana. This is our story of those 20 years.

Tim Liversedge, now a famous wildlife film director and host at that fateful dinner, had convinced my father that there was a need for a small highly personalised service at the upper end of the safari market.

First we had to consider in which African countries Bushbuck should operate initially and settled for Botswana and Zimbabwe. This was partly because they were comparatively new markets but more importantly because Tim had pointed us in the direction of the best camps in Botswana and we had met the redoubtable John Stevens in Zimbabwe.

Soon the Bushbuck philosophy was established and our expertise was to lie in communicating in sufficient depth with the potential clients as to what they really wanted and then to match those requirements with the most appropriate guides and camps. Also in order to preserve that expertise we wanted to keep the company small enough so that we did not have to employ anyone outside the family.

By 1987 as a result of safaris arising from family connections and personal recommendations we were well underway with our UK clients. The following year, for the first time, clients were coming from the US.

Then a whirlwind descended on us at about that time when we became the Managing Agents of the Catalina Safari Company as pioneered by a very charismatic and talented Frenchman called Pierre Jaunet who probably knows Africa as a whole better than any other living white man today. It was six hectic but happy years of ‘Trans Africas’ - taking off from the Nile in Cairo, landing just above Victoria Falls 3 weeks later with so many adventures along the way – and then there were the private charters – flying past the Statue of Liberty being the most memorable moment. This interlude taught us a lot about the travel industry but the most satisfying aspect of the whole exercise was that nobody is likely to do this again with a World War II Flying Boat.

Meanwhile by 1990 we began to realise how insular were some of the safari guides. The divide between East Africa and Southern Africa was as if they were from different continents. So we put together under the label of the Safari Guides Company (‘SGC’) an elite club of those guides whom we regarded as the best in the six safari countries in which we were then operating. That worked well in that we got to know the guides concerned much better than anyone else and were thus best placed to match the most appropriate guides to client needs. The guides also enjoyed comparing notes at annual meetings in a different host country each year and cementing long term friendships thereby. Even so by 1999 we felt that there was no more that we could contribute to that club and handed it over to the guides to run as they wished.

Now many years later, those of the SGC guides whom we still use are Charlie McConnell in Kenya, Soren Lindstrom in Botswana, Jan van der Reep in Namibia and Richard Bonham of Tanzania. Indeed we have been sending clients to Charlie & Soren since 1988.

The privately guided safari is not always affordable to everyone and as an alternative for our clients, we have always designed camp/lodge style itineraries. In the late 1980’s we had just a handful of camps and lodges on our best of Zimbabwe and Botswana list. Since then we have spread our wings and now use the best camps and lodges across nine safari countries, sometimes combining two countries in one itinerary. The camps and lodges have remained small, well hosted and located in wild game areas – this has been our criteria from the beginning.

Thus 25 years on the ethos of Bushbuck is much the same but my father retired from the scene last year when he was overwhelmed to welcome at his 80th birthday lunch Tim and June Liversedge, Pierre and Antoinette Jaunet, Charlie & Mouse McConnell, Soren Lindstrom and Jan, David & Robyn Foot and Suzi van der Reep.

As a family, we have always enjoyed and continue to enjoy running Bushbuck. Over the decades Bushbuck Safaris has come to represent the very highest level of quality and service and of that we are extremely proud.

Maybe, in due course one of my daughters will join me in Bushbuck.

Boo Chrisp