C Woodcock & Co

C Woodcock & Co Travel & Safari Outfitter
Vintage-inspired adventure gear for the global traveler

Peter Beard, the last adventurer…My 6 years spent working and living in Kenya were intertwined with and deeply influence...
12/03/2026

Peter Beard, the last adventurer…

My 6 years spent working and living in Kenya were intertwined with and deeply influenced by the lifestyle aesthetic developed by Beard

From Beard’s obit in The Guardian

Beard rose to fame during the 60s and 70s as he worked from Hog Ranch, a 45-acre property in Kenya he purchased after falling in love with Africa. His work, which could sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, is often credited with sounding the alarm about human beings’ impact on our environment, years before it became a mainstream concern. His first book, The End of the Game, looked at the big game elephant poachers who changed the face of Africa.

Beard was also the archetypal American socialite. Born into high society, he mixed with Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí and the Rolling Stones, and became a fixture at Studio 54 during its heyday. He sought out adventure. He narrowly escaped death in 1996 when he was charged by an elephant and gored in the right leg.

With his Hollywood looks, bohemian lifestyle, and camera in hand, a seemingly endless stream of models and vagabonds cycled through Hog Ranch over the years. Literally pouring his blood onto his collage art,

Beards work was unique, powerful, quirky, and highly commercial. His personal control of his collection was idiosyncratic at best, with Beard known to hand out original pieces randomly to friends, strangers, and to settle bar tabs.

Tales of Beard’s generosity of spirit, kind heart, and almost reckless embrace of kindred spirits are legend.

I have a dear friend with a very rare Beard book currently on offer which I posted in the last photo. Check it out!

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Where Adventure Lives Again

Veruschka in the Safari Dress by Yves Saint LaurentPhoto 1968 by Franco RubartelliI first ran across this famous photo i...
11/03/2026

Veruschka in the Safari Dress by Yves Saint Laurent
Photo 1968 by Franco Rubartelli

I first ran across this famous photo in a Swiss magazine in 2023. There is something primal about this image that continues to stick in my mind when I think about women and Safari styling.

If you think it to be a powerful female image, simultaneously sexy, primal, and dangerous, just imagine the splash it made in 1968.

YSL brought safari style to high fashion and safari style continues to make the rounds every 10-15 years.

Ralph Lauren has done extensive work in this space, Holland & Holland/Chanel developed an extensive collection in the ‘90s and for Banana Republic and Willis & Geiger the style butterer their bread for decades.

Needless to say, it’s my favorite style of them all!

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Ernesto on Safari! For all his fame as a “great white hunter” and the excellent works inspired by his safaris in East Af...
08/03/2026

Ernesto on Safari!

For all his fame as a “great white hunter” and the excellent works inspired by his safaris in East Africa, Hemingway only went on two safaris, the first in 1933 and the second during the holiday season of 1953 - ‘54.

Despite his limited time on the ground, Hemingway was able to absorb a tremendous amount of knowledge about the region, landscapes, and personalities of the men and women who occupied the savannas of East Africa.

The Green Hills of Africa, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Short Happy Life Of Francis Macomber, and the posthumously published “True At First Light”, all reflect Papa’s time spent on safari and his synthesis of the tales he heard shared around the campfires of the Masai Mara.

Have you been on safari? If so, do Hemingway’s tales ring true to you?

I was fortunate enough to live in Africa from 2008-2017 and this experience gave me a better understanding and appreciation for these works of Hemingway.

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Ernesto in color to brighten up your day!I dug down in my archives to pull out some of my favorite color photos of Papa ...
07/03/2026

Ernesto in color to brighten up your day!

I dug down in my archives to pull out some of my favorite color photos of Papa doing Papa things. We tend to see Hemingway in our mind’s eye in black and white, but he lived in a world as vibrant as ours, maybe more so!

Enjoy!

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Ernesto in Idaho, Fall of 1959.A Collection of Candid Vintage Photographic Slides and Later Color Prints from Hemingway’...
06/03/2026

Ernesto in Idaho, Fall of 1959.

A Collection of Candid Vintage Photographic Slides and Later Color Prints from Hemingway’s Hunting Lodge in Ketchum, Idaho. Fall, 1959. From the collection of Robert Herrera, his friend and manager of his Cuban property.

I’ve posted some of these photos in the past, but not as the full set.

Hemingway’s connection to Idaho was established well before he departed Cuba in 1960. Papa’s exploration of the area began in 1939 when he was part of a vanguard of early celebrity “influencers” enlisted to promote the nearby Sun Valley Lodge.

Returning to the area in 1958 after over a decade long absence, Hemingway was excited to connect with old local friends and to hunt the plentiful game in the area.

Before Ernest Hemingway bought his Idaho home, it was owned by Dan Topping.

The home sits near the Big Wood River just outside Ketchum and was designed with concrete walls made to look like rough-hewn wood, inspired by nearby buildings in Sun Valley, Idaho. 

This series shows Papa still in control of his creative energies and in decent health. Enjoy!

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Hemingway and Ingrid BergmanPapa sticks by his friend.In 1949, at the height of her fame, Bergman left her husband and c...
05/03/2026

Hemingway and Ingrid Bergman

Papa sticks by his friend.

In 1949, at the height of her fame, Bergman left her husband and child to live with Italian director Roberto Rossellini, with whom she had begun an affair. She became pregnant out of wedlock.

And then Hollywood pinned the scarlet “A” on her...

Hollywood’s reaction was brutal, she was denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate as a “powerful influence for evil.”, the studios blacklisted her, American theaters refused to show her films, and she was effectively exiled from Hollywood for seven years.

Papa famously stood by Bergman when Hollywood turned its back on her. There are several letters from Hemingway to Bergman offering encouragement as well as two fists in her defense if mistreated by Rossellini.

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Dateline: Tangier, MoroccoA sunny place for shady people…Only a one hour 15 min flight from Porto, Portugal, but a world...
03/03/2026

Dateline: Tangier, Morocco

A sunny place for shady people…

Only a one hour 15 min flight from Porto, Portugal, but a world away, Tangier sits at the literal crossroads of Africa, Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic.

The singular history of this city on the northern most point of Africa, only 9 miles from Spain, gives Tangier a feeling that anything can, and might, happen.

A step into the exotic.

Tangier’s multi-cultural palate is created by historical influences from the native Amazigh (Berber) peoples, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, Spaniards, Portuguese, and the French. The result is a unique melange that is that is simultaneously sweet, exotic, edgy, and intoxicating.

It’s the Islamic call to prayer, conducted five times per day, that sets the heartbeat for living in this city of over one million people. Tourists, locals, expats, and escapees from the norms of society all pile into the old medina, kasbah, and souk giving the ancient core a rhythm like no other place on earth. Digging deeper into the workings of this community one exposes the five foundational aspect of living in close communal quarters; the communal fountain for water, the communal oven for baking, the Koranic school for learning, the mosque for faith, and the hammam for bathing.

The exotic nature of the city has drawn artists, musicians, and writers for over a century. William Burroughs wrote “Naked Lunch” here. Truman Capote, Paul Bowles, Gore Vidal, J Paul Getty Jr, Talitha Pol, The Rolling Stones….all stumbled along the cobblestones of Tangier in the ‘50s and ‘60s, placing the city at the focal point of creative culture during the Beat and Hippie eras.

Our weekend recon on the city, and nearby, Chefchaouen (The Blue City) enthralled us and we left dreaming of finding our own winter artist blot hole where we can make our own extended “Tangierine Dream” come true, Inshallah!

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Ernesto spent the majority of his adult life in war, covering wars, and writing about men and women broken and scarred b...
02/03/2026

Ernesto spent the majority of his adult life in war, covering wars, and writing about men and women broken and scarred by war. He had some thoughts about it.

“But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.”
- Ernest Hemingway

“Someday this war’s gonna end.”
-Col. Kilgore

Hemingway made war the central focus of much of his art. The bloody battles of WWI in Italy, the Greco-Turkish War,
The Spanish Civil War, and WWII he experienced first hand, smelling the smoke of battle, the mud of a blasted field, and the stench of the dead.

Hemingway’s own physical and psychological wounds suffered in Italy in WWI had a profound impact, closing the door on his youth with a bang, and shaping his adult life in a way that left shrapnel and blood in almost every book he wrote.

I was born at the height of the Vietnam War, the same year we lost MLK and Bobby Kennedy. My childhood was shaded by the cloud of Cold War. My entire adult life has been colored by the seemingly endless geopolitical strife in the Middle East and Asia.

I served my country in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia as a diplomat working to stop wars. During this period I developed an unshakable faith in a shared humanity where we are all brothers and sisters descended from the same root stock, with basic shared values, spinning wildly through space on this tiny fragile little blue ball.

Was Kilgore right? Like two exhausted boxers in the last round locked in bloody embrace at the final bell, each unable to stand without the support of the other….is that how it will end one day?

We can do better, si?

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Ernesto and his illusive relationship with horses.“The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man”Winston Church...
01/03/2026

Ernesto and his illusive relationship with horses.

“The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man”
Winston Churchill

Hemingway was born on the cusp of the automobile age during a time when horses were still the primary means of personal transport.

Despite his being surrounded by horses most of his life, there are very few, less than a handful, of photos of Papa on a horse.

Odd, si?

He rode them (and fell off)in Montana and Wyoming, he studied the racing sheets and bet on them at Auteuil in Paris, he watched them being gored in the bull rings of Spain, and he wrote one of my favorite short stories, “My Old Man”, about the shady steeplechase circuit.

Too bad Hem didn’t have a camera around when the horses were close. I’ll keep looking for photos!

I started riding, enough to call myself a “rider”, during my two year stint in Karachi, Pakistan, where I learned to ride on polo ponies. Pakistani Polo ponies have two speeds, stop, and wide open. This instilled in me a healthy respect for horses, they can kill you.

Pro Tip: In life, it’s bestto know one’s animal and oneself before wrapping one’s legs around anything.

Which leads to my first ever camel ride on the shore of the Atlantic yesterday. I close my eyes, smell the sea, feel the sway of my camel under me, and I yell out “We’ve taken Aqaba!” to the children waiting in line for their turn to ride.

Life is good!

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León

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