The best and worst thing about travelling is that it makes you want to travel more. It’s commonly known as the ‘travel bug’ and once you get it there are few cures for it so the best thing to do is embrace it and let your adventurous nature develop and allow the experiences to flow.

However, to be ‘bitten’ you do need to go somewhere so overwhelmingly stunning, somewhere so wonderfully different and somewhere so out-of-this-world you will not only talk about it for years to come you will revisit the country time and time again, if not in person at least in your dreams. It is for these reasons that South Africa should be top of your to do list.

3 weeks after returning to the UK from what has to be one of the best travelling experiences of my very well travelled life, I am still trying to get over the shear brilliance of a country that offered so much (almost too much!) in the 2 weeks I visited for.

With so much on offer we wasted no time in getting started and stuck in beginning the trip with a visit to the Big 5 wildlife and conservation project taking place on a stunning game reserve near Port Elizabeth on the Eastern Cape. Once out in the African bush the experiences came thick and fast. Within just a few short days we’d come face to face with elephants, accompanying the gentle giants on their roams into the wild whilst also helping to feed them and clean their night time enclosures. Then there was the time spent feeding and playing with the tiger cubs and lion adolescents at the predator breeding centre. Add in some game monitoring, game capture and reforestation work and our back stage pass to a game reserve couldn’t have been more complete. On our final evening at the reserve, sat outside our accommodation on the veranda I took a snap shot for my memory of the scene; BBQ dinner in hand, the bush sprawling out for many hectares (6,000 to be exact), lit only by the moonlight and millions upon millions of dazzling stars. With only the constant backing track of crickets, conversation flowed freely with fellow volunteers interrupted occasionally by the deep throated roar of the lions resting just meters from our campfire. It was nothing short of incredible.

With a wishful glace back at the camp we bumped down the dirt track from whence we came, heading back to the university city of Port Elizabeth and enlisted some new friends for a fun night out. From beachside bar locations we tucked into one of the most sumptuous steaks I’d ever eaten (South Africa prides itself on the quality of its meat) and washed it down with some local Castle beers whose lowly price didn’t fairly reflect the quality. To celebrate we headed to a nightclub to dance off our dinner, finding out that South African’s are also very proud of their ability to party well into the small hours of the following morning.

After a flying 2 day visit to my aunts farm, where sunset horse riding and braai’s (South Africa’s deliciously unique take on BBQ’s) were the order of the day, we headed towards the famous Garden Route; the most scenic and direct journey down South Africa’s Western Cape to Cape Town, hugging the coastline and dodging the towering mountains of the Little Karoo.

Incredibly, the whole journey takes just 10 hours straight through but after just 4 days covering the route we felt like we’d only scrapped the surface such is the volume of activities and places to visit on offer. Along the way we surfed like the amateurs we are at world famous Jefferies Bay, zip lined over waterfalls in the magnificent Tsitsikama National Park before satisfying the most adventurous side of our nature and plunging 216 metres into a gorge on the worlds largest bridge bungee jump.

Pants changed, our journey continued south to Oudtshoorn- the ostrich capital of the world. On arrival to the sleepy town, nestled in the shadow of the Little Karoo mountain range, we were bowled over by the selection of activities on offer. Should we ride bikes through the mountain pass to waterfalls and world famous Cango Caves? Or should we go crocodile cage diving followed by a spot of ostrich riding? Over our delicious ostrich kebab braai, provided courtesy of our hostel, we settled on a visit to Cango Wildlife Sanctuary, nationally famous for it’s range of animals and efforts to help with their conservation. We also opted to learn the history of the ostrich and visit a farm for the aforementioned chance to ride on the worlds largest bird.

With a tick list as long as an our arms, including stepping into a cage with more big cats (this time the beautifully elegant Cheetah), dipping into a pool with crocodiles and an exhilarating 20 second ride (that felt like 20 minutes!)on Killer the ostrich we slumped down in our beautifully located accommodation for the evening which was the house for those i-to-i volunteers helping out at the Wildlife Sanctuary. With pizza ordered we sat on the back porch watching fully grown, rare white tigers prowl along the boundary fence of our garden that backed onto their breeding camp. We decided that from their masculine purring that they were keen on the large Double Pepperoni pizza before pinching ourselves to remember that this was all actually happening and wasn’t some incredible brush with wildlife watched on a TV screen from our sofas at home.

Begrudging leaving the tigers and other animals behind, we made the final road trip of our journey to Cape Town. Whilst we did spend our last 4 days here to call it the book-end of the trip would be a total injustice to the city. Set around the awe inspiring Table Mountain, so stunning that you’d be forgiven for thinking that Capetonians live there purely to marvel at the mountain, the city stretches for miles in all directions. From the thriving student areas and the plush houses of the eastern suburbs to the sandy beaches and waterfront so close and enticing to the business district and shops you wonder how any business gets done at all every inch of the city has something different to offer.

In our attempts to experience this city to the maximum we started by sampling a dazzling array of cocktails with some friends in one of the many authentically themed bars on the famed Long Street, THE destinations for those looking to enjoy the stand-out night life of South Africa. With an 8 piece African band jamming the way we all dream of doing, we almost learnt to dance a more vigorous version of salsa before grabbing a hot dog from one of the many friendly street vendors and heading back to our hostel. Waking to a blazing heat and a banging headache we somehow ended up at the base of Table Mountain ready to for a challenge that our lack of exercise and Flaming Lamborghini’s the previous night had not prepared us well for. Yet on arrival at the top 2 hours later we felt fulfilled that we had achieved it and had a hundred photos to prove that it really was worth it.

After a more refreshing evening out with friends watching a Super 15’s rugby game (a £5 experience that is worth every penny with no vuvuzelas in ear shot) we headed out to the smallest township in Cape Town called Masiphumelele housing a mere 40,000 residents. This highlighted South Africa’s most striking post apartheid struggle- that of the widespread and seemingly endless poverty that affects millions in the country. However, within this world of despair we found characters and communities determined to improve their current situations and more importantly their futures.

We volunteered for the morning on an i-to-i project working in a crèche with toddlers. Entering the classroom amid the middle of the Royal wedding procession we were greeted by around 70 grinning kids, aged 2-6 years old, keen to show us how they could count to 10. These happy faces represent the future of South Africa and, empowered by the support of the teachers running the crèche against all odds and on a budget not even close to shoestring, the future is looking positive. With some of the volunteers having spent 4,6 or 8 weeks working at the project, their disappointment and tears at their time coming to an end at the project was genuinely moving as was their sense of fulfilment knowing that in no small way they had helped with building this brighter future.

Dragging ourselves away from the brightly coloured walls of the crèche and followed by screams of “bye bye Teacher” we headed to lend a hand on with the i-to-i surfing project based in Muizenburg. With kids from the local Capricorn township in attendance we helped out teaching them to surf on one of the worlds most beautiful surfing beach settings. However we discovered that whilst surfing is the main activity here the main aim of the project was much greater as the volunteers helped to teach the kids transferable social skills that would help give them an important leg up in life.
After an exhausting day we big farewell to our new friends, catching a train from Muizenburg to Cape Town along what must be the most beautiful commuter route in the world. With crashing waves just metres from the tracks we watched as the sun descended through the sky forcing the sea to sparkle and never taking our eyes away from the water in the hope that a pod of dolphins or whales would surface as they so often along this coastline.
Back in Cape Town our final day held in store our most eagerly anticipated activity of the whole 2 weeks. At the crack of dawn we were whisked off up the coast to Gansbaai, Afrikans for ‘Bay of Geese’. We were here for more than geese. The waters off Gansbaai are regarded as the Great White Shark capital of the world and we were here jump into said waters and get as close as we cared to to these incredible yet endangered creatures of the depths.
Once out in the ocean and shaking “from the cold” (it was just a mere a 26 degrees in the midday sun!) we climbed into the diving cage, donned our face masks and submerged ourselves. From this one experience I can guarantee that 3D cinema or any other wonderful technological discovery will ever be able to replicate the experience of being underwater within centimetres of several Great White Sharks each just shy of 4 metres in length. Serene, exhilarating and (surprisingly)only slightly nerve wracking those 30 or so minutes spent in water is another snapshot for the memory bank that will be revisited time and time again bringing a huge a smile to our faces in the process. On the way back we chatted with the i-to-i volunteers who had worked on the boat with us, undertaking important conservation research during our underwater encounters. By the time we had returned to the shore we were itching to join them with story after story of amazing shark moments, great education on the marine life of the area and many a fun time back on dry land with the rest of the tight knit team.

And so finally the worst thing about travelling came around; going home with a burning desire to carry on travelling. On our final morning we sat on the deck of a cafe by the V&A waterfront ( far to posh for our washed out traveller shorts with holes in all the wrong places) and reflected on everything we had seen and done over the journey. Happy that we’d made the most of it we also agreed that we had fallen in love with South Africa whole heartedly and a return in the future was not a maybe but a must.

So if you’re short of ideas for where to go next or you’re wondering where best to direct you desire to volunteer look no further because South Africa is packed full of opportunities and is waiting for you to take just one of them.

• South Africa
• Lions
• tigers
• elephants
• wildlife
• game reserve
• shark
• Cape Town
• ostriches
• crocodile
• bungee jump
• volunteering