Just when you thought African safaris couldn't get any more exciting, along came horse riding in the Okavango Delta!  I'm kicking off the new year by announcing the first of the safaris I'll be leading NEXT year (2018) and it's a real cracker!  This one already has people signed up so don't dally if you are keen. 

We are very excited to announce that our family is moving back to Australia later this year, with Andy's appointment as CEO to a ground-breaking new foundation, Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef.  We will be based in far North Queensland in Cairns, close to nature and not far from where I was born and raised a rather long time ago now.  It's a great place to raise our two young boys, Solo (now 7) and Shep (just 3 years old) and we're excited about exploring the reef and the rainforest with them after 4 years living abroad in Asia and Europe.  

When you're sitting around the campfire in Africa having a glass of wine after a day of watching the animal kingdom unfold in all its glory all around you, the conversations are never dull.  One of the things I love about Africa is that everyone's learning something new every day, no matter whether you're an investment banker or a medical student or a farmer.  So by evening, with all the buzz and excitement of what you've seen in the wild that day, the reflections by the campfire are often very insightful and bring many different perspectives to the table.  

If you read all the bad press about Zimbabwe and believed it, you'd never ever go there for a holiday.  It's really unfair, as when you get there you are reminded of what a wonderful place this still is, and how incredibly friendly Zimbabweans are, in spite of a very tough couple of decades.  People in Zim are still smiling!  And that - combined with the wildlife - make it one of my favourite safari destinations.  

It's been 40 years since the last pan-African elephant census and so we conservationists have been playing a bit of a guessing game as to how Africa's giants are really faring in terms of hard numbers.  Just how bad were the declines and where are the problems greatest?  

Names like Ngorongoro and Serengeti are world famous, and recently on a journey there with 9 lovely folks from Singapore, I got the chance to see why.  The northern part of Tanzania is part of the Greater Mara-Serengeti ecosystem, so if you've been to the Maasai Mara in Kenya, that's just over the border from where this safari took place.

Announcing my Botswana safari for 2017 is now available for you to join!  This is an exclusive safari for just 8 people with me, combining the World Heritage wetlands and wildlife fiesta of the Okavango Delta, the elephant-rich woodlands of the Khwai region and the Makgadigadi Pan among the San Bushmen.  It's 7 nights in one of the world's last great wildernesses and a safari not to be missed if you love animals and Africa at its wildest!

Today to commemorate World Elephant Day, here's a few of my favourite elephant photos in celebration of this amazing animal...  In about a week's time I'm going to be announcing my next safari in Africa - and it's in the home of the world's largest population of elephants.... Can you guess where it might be?

What have elephants got to do with football and martial arts?  Well more than you might think!

Thailand has long been a hot spot for the illegal ivory trade, which is why the Let Elephants Be Elephants team targeted this country for the next phase of our campaign.  We have seen some stronger measures in Thailand in the last year, including changes to the legislation around ivory and a public ivory stockpile destruction by the government, but there is still much to be done to raise awareness of the issue in Thailand.

Years ago when I first moved to Namibia to start my PhD on the black-faced impala at the age of about 21, a couple of Aussies and a German who were working there at the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia adopted me and helped me find my feet in this unique desert land where I didn't know a soul.  The war vet invasions had just started in Zimbabwe, and, well, if you've read my first book "Dry Water" you'll know the rest of the story!  Over a decade later, two of my early rescuers, fellow Aussie Dr Julian Fennessy and his wife, German Steph Fennessy, are living in Windhoek and raising their two kids in Namibia whilst also working on giraffe conservation across the continent.  Together Julian and Steph started and run the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, the world's first and only organisation dedicated to giraffe conservation in the wild.