Clothes for Safari

MrsRocky20852

Hello! My husband and I have been fortunate to have traveled all over the world, but we are going on our first Safari with the Elegant Adventure tour in February 2018. Have read many contrary opinions about clothing requirements for the four Safari days. Is it imperative that we wear neutrals colors - khaki, green, browns? We certainly want to be comfortable, but all our travel clothes are are blacks and greys. Trying to determine if we truly need to buy new clothes just for this portion of the trip. Appreciate any advice! Thank you!

AshvEd

Most on our recent tour wore khaki colors while on the eight safaris. There are colors that frighten the animals or attract flying insects and that is why they make their recommendation. Also consider layers as it was chilly when we went out early and then warmed up. It also cooled down after sunset. They had blankets on the jeeps and that was helpful. The trip is nothing short of spectacular.

British

Most people do wear the khaki and beige type of color and those colors also hide the dust and dirt the best if you can't get your clothing washed. You can wear black because there are generally no tsetse flies in South Africa as there are in East Africa. Personally I would not wear what you might usually wear as travel clothes, they are probably too dressy for safaris. You can easily kit yourself out with 3 complete outfits for around $100. Also, you will probably love the safaris so much, you might want to go on other safaris. I have now taken five tours of Africa and am currently on my first day of our second trip to the Galapagos. Having lost some weight this past year, I had to buy some new safari pants, I found some pants described as Travel pants for $13 at Costco and these days I buy long sleeved thin cotton T shirts from Uniqlo in khaki, pale grey, beige and even a dusky pink that looks quite beige. In the sale they are $9-90 or full price $14-90. We never travel anywhere without our thin down jackets that fold into a small bag, Uniqlo also have those, very reasonable price, or again Costco, no need to buy expensive brands. We take two or three buffs with us for face protection from dust and and they also cushion our camera and binocular straps around our necks...these can cost around $20 but we use them a lot and on our recent Africa trip we found some fro $7. Back to colors for clothing, some years ago in South Africa, a friend was on a Safari tour and the guide refused to take someone who was wearing bright red out until they changed their t shirt.

AlanS

All of what has been said, is correct- natural colors, colors vs flies, colors that don't show the dust and dirt, cool/wicking clothing, etc. etc., but what do real people actually wear? I went back to my photos taken during our K&T (not EA); and while most did indeed wear earth-tones, some folks just wore other comfortable attire. I will say, the vast majority of shirts that were not earth-tone, but blue, green, and a few plaid, etc., were still Columbia (PFG) or a similar brand of cool/wicking clothing. Our TD wore a mix of solid, earth-tone clothing with a few (orange and blue plaid shirts) thrown in. Our guides all wore earth-tones. If you decide to get some "safari" type clothing, and continue to travel there will be other opportunities to wear it. We wore our safari clothes in the Galapagos and will again on our upcoming Botswana, SA, Zambia trip. I have even worn my zip-offs on regular tours- wore long pants in the morning and then zipped off to make shorts when temps got a bit warm.

Mostly I photographed animals and the landscape, but here are a few misc. shots of folks in our group:



Our TD, the "legendary" Seth:



Safari Jane (LOML):












And then there is this guy : )

AshvEd

AlanS....What’s the secret to posting photos? Cheers. Ed

AlanS

AshvEd wrote:

AlanS....What’s the secret to posting photos? Cheers. Ed

Ed, here is a link to my explanation and instructions:

https://www.tauck.com/yaf/default.aspx?g=posts&m=40339#post40339

AlanS
from "Little" Washington

AshvEd

Thanks Alan...

MrsRocky20852

Thank you everyone for your replies! Very helpful!! Happy Holiday ~