Every year around this time, inboxes everywhere erupt in the usual suspects: “New year, new you!” “Become your best self!” “This is the year you finally take up Pilates!” Listen… if 2026 wants me to become a glowing, green-smoothie-fuelling, accountability-journalling beacon of discipline, then 2026 needs to take a seat and reconsider its expectations.
Wild motion that rewrites what a new year means, Image Credit: Jao Camp
Wishes for You, the Wanderers
I don’t do resolutions. I do realities. And preferably the kind that involve wildlife, wide-open spaces, and a well-timed sundowner. So this year, instead of offering you another list of “habits to try,” I’m excited to share something better: Our Wishes for You for 2026, which I’ve reframed as an Anti-Resolution Travel Manifesto.
No instructions or improvements. Just invitations. Grounded, human, full-bodied invitations to step into Africa in ways that resonate and endure.
Every line below comes from a member of our Rhino Crash – someone who spends their days connecting people to our continent’s wildest, warmest truths. Each wish becomes a manifesto line, followed by one real moment you can turn into your own story (come true) for next year. Let’s begin.
Sundowner stillness where your travel manifesto quietly takes shape, Image Credit: Jao Camp
But First, Meet the Voices Behind the Wishes
And because a manifesto should come with actual voices, not just mine, here’s our Rhino Crash sharing their own wishes for you in 2026.
1. Let the Fireside Guide You, Not Your Inbox
“My wish is for you to share stories by the fire, where laughter carries, stars listen, and strangers become family.” – Allison.
Some resolutions tell you to “speak your truth,” which is lovely until you realise all your truths are being typed into a Notes app at 23:07. Africa solves this by giving you a fire, a circle of people, and a night sky that makes you wonder why you ever settled for LED lighting.
Around a safari boma, stories stretch, wander, unravel, and stitch themselves back together. Someone admits they cried when they saw their first elephant. Someone else confesses they tried to “whisper” to a hyena. Guides swap tales that somehow balance science, superstition, and impeccable comedic timing.
It’s honest. It’s human. It’s the opposite of contrived.
Make it real: Spend an evening at a lodge in Botswana’s deep wilderness. Let the fire crackle, let the stories land where they may, and stop pretending you’re going to log your gratitude entries later. This is the real thing.
Stories find their spark in places like this, Image Credit: andBeyond
2. Count the Lives You Touch, Not the Steps You Track
“I’m inspired by the smiling faces of the children at the Good Work Foundation. Every visit touches more than one life, and I wish for all to witness the pure joy.” – Simone.
Wellness culture loves a metric – streaks, steps, streaks about steps. But the truest measure of a year well-lived isn’t on your wrist; it’s in the places where your choices ripple outward.
Walk into a Good Work Foundation (GWF) classroom, and you feel the shift immediately.
There’s energy – the goosebump and eyes-glistening kind that comes from futures expanding in real time. Girls solving robotics problems. Boys discovering coding. Teens teaching visitors how to say “hello” in Siswati. Laughter bouncing off the walls with realised potential.
And standing there, you realise: This is the kind of “impact goal” that actually sticks.
Make it real: Incorporate a GWF campus visit to your Greater Kruger safari. It’s not a tour. It’s a reminder of possibility, progress, and why meaningful travel matters.
Joy grows louder when children lead the way
3. Swap “Drink More Water” for “Float on a River”
“My wish is for you to find peace in cool waters. To drift and dream where the wild still whispers and to take the leap, into the unknown, into joy, into Africa.” – Barry.
Every January, someone tells you to hydrate “for clarity”. But, here’s a secret: clarity arrives much faster when you’re drifting along the Zambezi River as the world glows in pink, purple and copper around you.
The water holds you. Hippos surface like living punctuation marks. Your boat glides past reeds that hum with insects, birds, and the soft, steady pulse of life doing what life does.
There’s no urgency here. No productivity hacks. Just a stretch of river that asks nothing of you except presence.
Make it real: Book a sunset cruise in Victoria Falls or the Lower Zambezi. Let the warm air, slow drift, and wide-open sky straighten out the knots you didn’t know you were carrying.
When the river slows you into paying attention, Image Credit: Sausage Tree Camp
4. Join the Kind of Joy That Refuses to Be Solo
“I wish for guests to rise in joyful unison with Africa’s people, to jump, to laugh, to feel the rhythm that lifts everyone together.” – Natasha.
Some places introduce you to joy you didn’t realise you’d misplaced somewhere between deadlines, debriefs, and the noble-but-doomed attempt to detox more.
Joy is contagious in Africa. It shows up in the ways people move, greet, gather, tease, dance, and turn a little interaction into a full-blown “Oh fine, I’ll get involved” situation.
It’s in the collective energy of a community that doesn’t hesitate to welcome you in – as someone who’s allowed to laugh loudly, stomp the dust a little, and remember what unfiltered delight feels like.
Make it real: Spend time in Rwanda, where warmth is a way of living. Let the people set the pace, and you’ll find yourself lifted by something that outlasts resolutions by a very comfortable margin.
Joy multiplies the second you step into the circle, Image Credit: Wilderness Sabyinyo
5. Choose Awe Over Productivity
“I want you to drift above Africa, rising with the sun as the world unfolds beneath you.” – Siphokazi.
You can wake up early to answer emails, or you can wake up early to rise above the Serengeti National Park in a hot air balloon while the world rearranges itself beneath you. I know which one feels closer to enlightenment.
You haven’t lived until you’ve stood in a balloon basket while the burner sighs and the Serengeti exhales, stretching itself awake. The air is crisp, the horizon is blushing, and the balloon feels impossibly delicate – like an idea you’re scared to jinx. Then you lift off.
Below, you see herds grazing in the half-light, shadows stretching long across the plains, the raw geometry of a landscape carved by instinct, survival, and millennia of movement. Emails? What emails?
Make it real: A sunrise balloon safari during the Great Wildebeest Migration. There’s no productivity app on earth that can compete with this feeling.
When the day begins exactly where wonder lives
6. Seek Grace in Creatures That Owe You Nothing
“May you witness the grace of a cat in the wild – powerful, patient, and perfectly at home.” – Chantal.
Grace wears many forms out here. Sometimes it’s a leopard slipping through grass with that effortless, carved-from-shadow elegance that seems to have seeped into their bones from birth. Other times, it’s a cheetah standing in the long grass, body held in that impossible stillness before intention becomes motion.
Or, it’s a lion past his prime, scarred, slow to rise, one eye clouded, mane thinned by seasons of conflict and drought. There’s no vanity in him. There’s no need for it. Every mark on his body is a chapter, and he carries them with a dignity that makes you sit up a little straighter in your seat.
Make it real: Spend time in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve, where leopard lineages are known through generations – mothers, daughters, territories, triumphs, heartbreaks.
The kind of encounter that rearranges your posture instantly
7. Come Home to the You Only Africa Remembers
“Our wish for you is to come home to Africa and for you to experience Africa the Rhino Africa way.” – Waniq and Ryan.
There are places that greet you politely, and then there are places that greet you like you’ve been overdue. It’s as if the wind, dust, salt, soil, and stories have all shrugged and said, “Finally”.
This is what “home” feels like. Not the domestic kind. The ancestral kind, even if you weren’t born on this continent.
It’s in the way the light hits the Cape Peninsula just before sunset. It’s in the way the Okavango Delta rearranges itself at a pace that refuses to match your phone screen. It’s in how Namibia looks simple from a distance, then reveals more layers the longer you stand still.
It’s about the simple, grounding realisation that you’re steady here. That something fits, even if you can’t articulate it.
Make it real: Let us shape a journey that feels less like sightseeing and more like reacquainting yourself with places you should’ve met sooner. Think coastlines, plains, cities, and desert spaces that rearrange your internal compass.
Some places climb deep into your heart
8. Let Your Presence Protect Something Wild
“My wish is to have you join us in Africa, where your journey helps protect its future.” – David Ryan, Rhino Africa’s CEO and Founder.
Impact has become a buzzword, usually tucked between “sustainability pledge” and “eco-friendly font choices”. But when you travel to Africa with Rhino Africa, the impact is tangible. You can stand inside it. And you can meet the people carrying it forward.
Every choice, like where you stay, who guides you, and which reserves you support, threads into a network of real, measurable protection.
It looks like:
- Anti-poaching units that can keep their boots on the ground
- Wildlife corridors staying open for elephants who remember old routes
- Young trackers building careers; communities gaining resources; research teams collecting data while a lion yawns loudly in the background, unimpressed by clipboards but benefiting all the same
Make it real: A Rhino Africa journey supports conservation and community pillars from day one, such as Wildlife ACT, pangolin rehabilitation, GWF, and countless wild spaces that stay wild because our guests choose the right way to travel.
Holding what the world can’t afford to lose
Why Do I Have Reservations About Resolutions?
Resolutions are fickle things. They wilt, evaporate, or slide off the calendar faster than I can misplace a water bottle on safari. By February, most of mine have vanished with the same enthusiasm I had when I swore I’d “get into hiking this year”.
And to be fair, there are people who keep theirs. I genuinely admire them. They wake up early, stretch, hydrate, and track their progress with the kind of discipline I reserve for choosing the right seat on a game drive. They’re built from remarkable stock, and I wish them well as I continue to avoid my yoga mat entirely.
When the journey reminds you life isn’t linear, Image Credit: Machaba Camp
Why a Manifesto Instead?
A manifesto, though… A manifesto feels different. It doesn’t bark instructions or demand reinvention. It doesn’t hover over your shoulder like a well-meaning life coach. It doesn’t make you feel like you’re competing with someone else or yourself. It simply nudges you toward paying attention to what steadies you, widens you, or makes you feel like you’ve stepped back into your actual life instead of the admin surrounding it.
A manifesto gives you room. Room to notice how the air feels on an early-morning drive, or how your shoulders drop when the game drive vehicle rolls to a stop beside a waterhole. Room to remember that clarity often arrives in unexpected places – usually outdoors, and usually when you’re not trying so hard to summon it.
And maybe that’s why this approach works. Resolutions want you to change. A manifesto simply invites you to notice what was waiting for you all along.
Proof that the best clarity happens outdoors, Image Credit: Vumbura Plains
A Year Shaped by Wishes, Not Willpower
I opened this by saying I don’t do resolutions. And I stand by it. No gym sign-ups. No kale crusades. No 90-day challenges that collapse under the weight of real life. Just this: A set of wishes (note: not goals) that open doors. A manifesto of experiences waiting to be stepped into. A continent ready to meet you where you are and bring you somewhere truer.
Our “Wishes for You for 2026” aren’t about becoming a new you. Instead, they’re about remembering the version that’s been here all along. And if Africa plays a role in that… well, we’d be honoured to guide the way.
