I had an urge to go to Cape Town, and that's how this trip began. Even with all of the research I did, I still wasn't completely sure what to expect. It seemed that everyone we talked to had a "story" about South Africa...and, well, the country does have its issues with crime. All that said, we LOVED every minute of our trip! Yes, there is poverty, and we did see it--but never once did I feel unsafe. Now that I got that out of the way, let me gush about how much I liked it.
South Africa is quite possibly the most beautiful country in the world that I have seen. The food is great, the people were friendly, and the pace of life is something we really enjoyed. I saw the most beautiful thing I've ever seen (Cape of Good Hope), we had more adventure than ever before (Shamwari), and we met interesting people. It's a romantic place, and this vacation has taken the very prestigious #1 spot in my heart (previously held by our trip to Cradle Mountain, Tasmania in 2007). Would we go back? Absolutely! I miss it terribly already.
There's no good way to get to South Africa from Chicago. We chose to fly from Chicago to London on United Airlines--we won't make that mistake again. United is fine for domestic flights, but it has the worst long-haul Economy Class we've seen yet. After staying a night in London, we flew on British Airways direct to Cape Town. That flight was a pleasure...for an 11-hour flight, anyway. We arranged our airport transportation directly with our hotel (Queen Victoria), which I highly recommend.
Getting from Cape Town to the Shamwari Game Reserve required a quick flight for us to Port Elizabeth. We flew on South African Airways, and although the flight was only a little over an hour, we were still given a meal. From there, it was an hour and twenty minutes to the lodge, and thankfully, we had arranged transportation with Shamwari.
My only regret from our trip to South Africa is not buying this guy's CD. He was so fantastic! But it was our last day, and I had already bought so many things. I was trying to exhibit self control. But now I wish I had his CD. That could be a reason to go back to Cape Town. :)
I took this on our afternoon safari on our first day at Shamwari. Giraffes became my favorite animal on this trip--I mean, just see how graceful they are! And I love Ben's narration in this. He was the best ranger we could have imagined! (There were eventually six in our group, but on the first day, there were only four of us. It was a very personalized safari.)
On one of our afternoon drives, we were hoping to find some elephants, and not just one or two like we had previously encountered. Oh did we find elephants. We were driving down this path, and in the distance, we saw about five of them. We pulled over as much as we could, turned off the vehicle, and watched them go by. But it wasn't just the five. More kept rounding the bend and coming our way. There must have been between forty to fifty elephants in the end...from babies to the massive and quite intimidating male bull elephant. Their eyes were very emotive. The young ones seemed to like us, and almost posed for our pictures. The older ones gave us looks as if to say, "Get over yourselves," and moved on. They were close enough to touch, but of course no one in our group would have done something that foolish. Once the parade was over, the sun was starting to set. We made our way to a lookout point where we had our evening drink while watching the sunset, and then made our way back to the lodge.
Here we have teenage lions devouring a warthog, while the adult male lion sits to the left. Although they were not full grown, the sounds these lion cubs made were terrifying. The clicking sound you might hear is the noise of a fellow group member's camera. I feel like there had to be a silent mode, and he just wasn't using it.
You're watching this giraffe, and then the rhinoceros appears. It was pretty cool.