We’re just back from an amazing trip to South Africa, Lesotho & Swaziland!
I know that I keep saying this is the last trip we’re taking and this time it really was the last one for a long while! We had a very good excuse for this holiday though as we flew over to South Africa to celebrate our gorgeous friend’s wedding!
It’s always an honour to be invited to a wedding so there was no way we were going to miss it!
Given that we’d already travelled around 10000 km we figured we might as well make the most of being in a new country (and continent!) so we hired a car and spent two amazing weeks travelling around and seeing as much as we could.
We started our African adventure down in Durban where we spent a few days relaxing and mainly eating way too much delicious food! As always when there’s water around, Jan spent a day diving and this time he even got to see some sharks!
After a couple of days in Durban and a few days of wedding fun, we carried on up to Lesotho.
I’m not sure what we were thinking but we thought it would be a fun adventure to drive up the Sani Pass which, if you’ve not heard of it, is a rather treacherous road aka. dirt track up to the border between South Africa and Lesotho.
After a nail-biting half an hour of being thrown around the car, dodging little streams and trying not to wreck our hire car by bouncing over countless potholes we were finally able to cross into Lesotho and have a drink at the highest pub in Africa!
From Lesotho, we then headed all the way across to Swaziland. We’d originally planned on doing nothing more than relaxing by the pool but it turned out to be a bit too cold so instead, we did some more exploring and went on a super fun canopy tour where we slid down wires through the treetops – we even got to see a black mamba!
The biggest chunk of our two-week trip was spent in the spectacular Kruger National Park. It’s hard to even put into words just how spectacular our time there was.
Seeing all of the wildlife close up was an amazing experience. It didn’t feel real and every time we saw another animal it felt so special! Sometimes the animals were so close by that we could have almost touched them (obviously we didn’t)!
We were so lucky and managed to see more than we’d thought possible! We saw countless elephants, buffalos and zebras, loads of giraffes and we even spotted lions and leopards!
The only big animal that we didn’t manage to spot was a Rhino. Apparently, they’ve been heavily poached (so much so, that they’re apparently starting to poach elephants again) so that are none left in the area.
We were also lucky to have some great guides who made the trip extra special. Obviously, everyone visits the park for the big animals but it was really interesting to learn about a lot of other wildlife, too. Who knew that termite hills could be so interesting?!
We’ve been well and truly bitten by the safari bug and hope that we’ll manage to do more in the future. We also still have to spot the elusive rhino!
Have you ever been on safari? What’s the best holiday you’ve ever been on? What would your dream vacation look like?
Wowee it looks bloody epic, how stunning to be able to see all those animals in that environment! I really cannot get my head around the poaching that takes place, how can people be OK with doing it? Anyway, I’ll stop before I really get on my high horse! I so admire the fab holidays you guys have, they always look so interesting – and varied! X
It really was, Lucy! I have to admit that going on a safari hadn’t been particularly high on my must-do list but now that I’ve been I can’t wait to do another one. It really was spectacular and it’s really difficult to describe just how special it was to be so close to the animals.
I actually had a full paragraph in the post about poaching but I deleted it because I was getting too carried away. Having seen so many animals in real life I find poaching and hunting even more difficult to understand.
Cx