Hammerstein Africa Lodges: An adventure, every day!

When I was a child, I wanted to be a pirate. Sometimes being a cowboy sounded equally fun, but my first love remained pirate. I can’t honestly tell you about a movie or book that inspired such flight of fantasy, but something, somewhere, had come across my path and had inspired me to tear up my clothes and bloody my face and arms with my mother’s lipstick. (Bless her soul for not wringing my neck when I appeared from the bathroom in tatters and coloured bright scarlet!)

Outside I had built a fort, a ship, and buried edible treasures ‘stolen’ from our pantry. I drew a map, burnt its edges, invited a few fellow scurvy dawgs over to assist me in finding the lost treasures I had ‘definitely not’ buried. From the onset of my adventures, it had become clear to

me that going at it alone would not deliver near the amount of unbridled fun as having a crew of likeminded rovers with whom to share my soil-covered spoils.

Now, looking back and wondering from where my fascination with the ocean-faring scallywags stemmed, I realise it was never being a pirate that appealed to me – it was the adventure, the willingness to fare into waters unknown, to look at a area on a map that says Terra Incognito, go there, discover it, bury treasure and fare off on the next adventure.

Disney would later put spectacular visuals to the same romanticised story I had played out in my garden, but by that time I needed very little extra motivation to adventure yonder.

I was, and still am, addicted to wanderlust. It became my love (even more so than sailing the seven imaginary seas with Captain Gardenbeard!), and I find myself thusly a purveyor of that with which I have saturated myself all these years. I have learnt the jargon. I have studied the effects on others, and time and time again it has been my responsibility (and honour) to convince others to seek out their own adventures.

Here at Hammerstein Africa Lodges, we have established a culture of manifesting our fantasies. We were each a pirate, an adventurer, a swashbuckling rascal, but more so than ever, now I find the pleasure in sharing the spoils.

It is no longer the packet of biscuits dug from the rose beds, but a massive wild and wonderful nature, vast and indiscriminate. It is forts built with our own imaginations for our sojourning fellows to stay at, enjoy, relax. It is cuisine cooked and baked to nourish bodies tired and depleted after each spectacular day of escapades.

Welcome to Hammerstein Africa Lodges… where it’s an adventure, every day!

Karel Swanepoel
Marketing: Hammerstein Africa Lodges

Leave a Reply