Womxn for Wild offers women-only adventure getaways in Africa without barriers to bonding and having fun, says co-founder Carmen Claire
Words Lisa Abdellah
Photography by Carmen Claire and Melanie van Zyl
While making lunch in the kitchen, we overheard raucous laughter from the lounge. Twelve women were playing a silly game. They’d met two days earlier when they’d joined our Womxn for Wild South Coast Surf Camp on Umzumbe Beach. Those who’d felt shy on the first day were suggesting meeting up, going hiking or for beers in Joburg.
I wasn’t always adventurous. Women appeared on my Instagram feed, hiking, surfing, scuba diving and climbing, which I found fascinating but separate from my life in inner-city Joburg, where I worked in sound engineering, live broadcast, film and marketing and spent my weekends at festivals and music events, sleeping all day and partying all night. Moving to Plettenberg Bay was the catalyst for my outdoor lifestyle. I realised how much easier it is to get into sports like trail running if you can access natural spaces and a community that shares your interests.
My first barrier to entry was that activities like surfing and rock climbing are male-dominated. Representation matters: seeing more women participating would’ve felt less daunting. My second was that learning anything for the first time is overwhelming because it means stepping outside your comfort zone. Researching how to get outdoors more, I found a bunch of overseas organisations like Women Who Hike, which offers hiking experiences worldwide. We wanted to start a similar community here, but that wasn’t specific to one activity, as there wasn’t anything like that in South Africa.
Womxn for Wild co-founder Melanie van Zyl grew up in an outdoorsy family who camped and travelled around this country and Botswana, so she’d been conservation curious from a young age. With my marketing background and a new-found love for adventure, combined with her knowledge of travelling in Africa and the best local tour operators, we launched Womxn for Wild in late 2020. Since hosting our first experience, Hiking the Mnweni Circuit, we’ve organised many more, from mountain biking to surfing and scuba diving, some that prioritise learning and conservation principles and others focusing more on an activity’s technical components. They take place all over Africa, from the Cederberg to Botswana, and usually last three to four days to give the women the chance to bond. All ages over 18 are welcome – our youngest was 20, our oldest 72 – and participants’ race, culture and background varies. You learn a lot from people whose life experiences and perspectives differ from your own.
We engage with women from all walks of life via Instagram and keep our price points as accessible as possible by varying the types of experiences we run, from multi-day hikes and wild camping in the Drakensberg to our Mountain Biking 101 at Boschendal Wine Estate, including chalet accommodation and all meals.
Participants’ safety, particularly in remote locations, is paramount. Not only are the guides we select reputable and certified, but they’re local and know the area well – which paths to take and where you can or can’t light a fire. For example, Michaela Geytenbeek, who leads all our hikes in the Drakensberg, is CATHSSETA registered, carries a satellite phone and has direct contact with the mountain rescue team should anything go wrong. All our guides and operators follow strict leave-no-trace principles, such as picking up rubbish. Beyond adventuring, there’s an educational component to Womxn for Wild’s experiences. We work with a specific NPO for each trip, which a portion of participants’ fees go towards. During our South Coast Surf Camp, we showed a film by WildOceans to give the women a 360-degree view of the water where they were surfing and help them understand the human impact on the wildlife living there. Women have reached out to us, women who’ve been through a tough time and needed a catalyst to shake things up, make them see things differently and help them get out of their comfort zone. The impact Womxn for Wild has had on women’s lives has left Mel and me in tears.
Perhaps the best testimony to that is we have what we call our ‘alumni’ of women who’ve been on more than one experience – one woman has been on four; she loves it.
Instagram: womxnforwild
This article was originally published in the September 2024 issue of Getaway
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