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It is now almost 30 years since Bushbuck was first conceived over an excellent dinner in the bush of Botswana. This is our story of those 30 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 private guide John Stevens in Zimbabwe.
Soon the Bushbuck philosophy was established and our expertise was 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 1985 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’ with the Catalina Flying Boat - taking off from the Nile in the middle of Cairo, landing just above Victoria Falls 3 weeks later with so many adventures along the way. The water landing on Lake Turkana in the very north of Kenya on the inaugural flight was historic – when the noise of the engines died down, the screams from the villagers crescendoed as they frantically ran up and down the shore, arms waving, imagining that we had crashed into the water. It was the first time a flying boat had landed on Lake Turkana.
The Catalina attracted international and media interest. Some famous household names chartered the aircraft for tailor made trips around the world – the Peter Stuyvesant charter down the East Coast of the US, flying past the Statue of Liberty is one of the greatest images of Z-Cat, the BBC to film the award winning documentary ‘The Last African Flying Boat’, and our greatest claim to fame – Bill Gates, his friends and bodyguards, lake hopping along the Rift Valley. 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. We wrote a book to record this extraordinary experience ‘The African Catalina’.
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 still leading safaris are Charlie McConnell, Soren Lindstrom, Robin Pope, John Stevens and David Foot. Indeed we have been regularly sending clients to Charlie and Soren since 1988.
The privately guided safari is not always affordable to everyone and especially for so for a couple or singletons, and so we have always designed camp/lodge style itineraries. We use the best camps and lodges across nine safari countries. The criteria from the beginning has been small, exclusive, preferably owner-operated, and located in wild game areas with excellent guiding and hosts. We have featured in both editions of the US publication ‘1000 Places to See Before You Die’ by Patricia Schultz for our experienced recommendations on the best of Africa.
Thus almost 30 years on the ethos of Bushbuck is much the same. My father retired from the scene five years ago 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 David & Robyn Foot and Jan & 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