Welcome to the Bonamy notebook, your home for all that is safari. 

The humble notebook is a key part of any traveller, explorer or ranger’s kit; it’s a place to record the amazing sights seen, stories heard and things learnt. This is exactly what the Bonamy blog is. (Apologies to those who were hoping for a spin-off of the Ryan Gosling/Rachel McAdams love story!)

One of the first things I learnt when starting my time in the African bush was that I must never be further than an arm’s reach from my notebook. This was hammered into me on the first morning of my ranger selection course; all those who had committed the heinous crime of forgetting their books were given an extra sandbag to carry – which made all the difference pushing a 2.5 tonne Land Rover Defender up a steep hill in the scorching sun.

Why is the notebook so important? It’s where you record everything that you see, hear, smell. It’s also where you note down the sometimes tricky questions you get asked by guests and need to remember to get back to them on – after a long hard day in the bush these are easy to forget, so good to keep note of.

Slowly but surely, as your notebook fills up, so does your knowledge. After a short amount of time, when you look back at those unintelligible scribblings you hurriedly jotted down as you were scaling a tree to get out of the path of an oncoming herd of buffalo - ‘are buffalos in a herd as dangerous as lone bulls?’ - you realise that you actually know a lot more than you gave yourself credit for.

As this blog develops, we hope that so will your wealth of knowledge from incredible animal behaviour and sightings, to funny anecdotes via conservation updates, as well as anything else safari-orientated. It will also be a place for you to ask questions which we will we do our best to answer for you.

Welcome to the notebook, we hope you enjoy it.