Why choose us

I’ve been in and out of South Africa regularly since I was five years old. The more I visit this huge complicated country, the more passionately I come to love it. It isn’t perfect – nowhere is – but in many ways it comes close, as a wildlife destination as in other ways. Clipping off the tail end of Africa, from east coast to the west, it has an astonishing array of geology and flora, creating one of the richest wildlife habitats on the planet. Land soars from sea level up through the lowveld, climbs the escarpment at the end of Africa’s Great Rift Valley to the heights of the Drakensberg mountains, passing rolling highveld savannah and the Kalahari Desert en route. There are baobabs and cloud forests filled with cycads, deserts that burst into bloom in spring, and strange bulbous succulent halfmen march across the rocky slopes. The Western Cape is a global floral kingdom all on its own.

It’s extremely difficult to write an impartial review of the safari experience in your homeland. But I’ll give it a shot… From a purely wildlife viewing perspective, I would rank the country amongst the best in Africa.

Glorious images of elephants, rhinos, lions, leopards and buffalo parading through pristine bush are central to South Africa’s popular image. So it comes as a surprise to some first-time visitors that, in reality, the proportion of this complex nation given over to national parks and reserves is rather small compared to other parts of southern and East Africa safari belt.