We knew we’d spend a good portion of our time in South Africa game viewing at the national and provincial parks , after all it’s not exactly common to see a lion hunt in downtown D.C. (well depending on your profession maybe it is!). First through Kruger, than the parks in Swaziland, Huhuilwe-iMfolozi and finally we hit what many consider to be South Africa’s hidden gem- Addo Elephant Park.
Ever since the “elephant incident” at Kruger I’ve been dreading Addo Elephant Park. A park dedicated to elephant sent visions of being crushed by these gentle giants through my head, and well I was hoping that having two other people in the car might persuade my darling husband to re-evaluate …

While staying at Malealea Lodge in Lesotho we were rather well equipped to provide for ourselves, or ’self-cater’ as its referred to here, each night. We had just enough food between the four of us (ourselves and two others we managed to squeeze into our little car) to last us our entire stay with the exception of dinner one night. Dinner at the lodge didn’t look too bad actually, but something else appealed to us a bit more. A traditional Basotho meal served at the home of one of the villagers.
On account of the rains our host Teboho arrived to pick us up at the lodge early. We wrapped up what we were doing and scurried with him out of …

As we set off to find the bushman paintings, the village men surrounding the gate were severely disappointed we didn’t want a guide. Sure the paintings would have been easier to find with a guide, but what’s the fun in that. Hearing the owners warning not to go into the gorge for fear of disrupting a boy’s coming of age ceremony, we took what we were sure was the right path. Breathtaking scenery, it wasn’t too long before local children started to shout lumela, hello, lumela, at us. Grabbing our hands, the children smiled, asked us to take their picture and got up the courage to ask for sweets. Without sweets, the children were disappointed, but enthralled by our friend’s …

The end of traditional tourism is here, say good-bye to huge resources draining all-inclusive resorts. World-wide lodges, hostels and hotels are turning more eco-friendly, and some even go beyond not changing the used towels you hang up. Worldwide new trends in tourism are developing, from eco-tourism to poverty tourism to agro-tourism, but one of the most promising is perhaps the increasingly popularity of sustainable tourism. Sustainable tourism, developing the tourism industry in a way that it enhances the traditional culture and environment instead of tearing it down. We’ve been lucky enough to see true sustainable tourism twice on our trip- once in Nicaragua and once in Lesotho.
The Malealea Lodge in Malealea, Lesotho is written up in all the guidebooks as …

Most famous for its “Operation Rhino” program, Hluhuluwe-iMfolozi National Park is a conservation focused big game park. Home to a quarter of the world’s rhinocerous population, the park’s Operation Rhino has successfully brought the white rhino back from the brink of extinction. A little over 100 years ago only 20 white rhinos existed in the world, today the global population is closer to 13,000 with the entire world’s population originating from the conservation efforts at Hlhuluwe-Imfolozi park. That’s quite an accomplishment. The program is so successful that the park has had to move “surplus” rhinos to other big game parks across Southern Africa in order to maintain a manageable population for the park.

The story of …

Having just spent 9 months in Latin America we consider ourselves to be something of chicken experts. For several months in Central America, if we weren’t eating chicken with our rice and beans it was because we were eating eggs with our rice and beans. So imagine our surprise here in Africa to find equally great chicken once again, but this time the chicken owes its success to the mix of cultures here in South Africa.
Although it is obvious that this country consists of people of English decent and African decent, it might be less obvious how many other cultures call South Africa home. There are the Afrikaans, descendants of the original Dutch settlers, sometimes called Boers. …

Swaziland is the last absolute monarchy in Africa and trust me it’s good to be King. A beautiful mountainous country, the Swazi people are incredibly friendly and good hearted. A small nation (smaller than Kruger National Park), Swaziland is famous for its cultural heritage…or perhaps specifically for the Umhlanga (Reed) Dance. It would be great to travel around the world from festival to festival, and I think there’s even a guidebook dedicated to festivals around the world, but alas traveling long term we don’t have the money to pick up and go every time a place has a special occasion. The Umhlanga Dance however I think might be different, at least for our male readers. As I …

After our elephant experience in Kruger safety around animals has been on my mind, so when I saw an article in a nature magazine entitled “animal safety” I flipped to the article. The advice was basically this: hippo, rhino, elephant, lion- stay away and if you can’t stay away get away quickly and quietly before it notices you. Well that’s helpful. With no specific advice to follow, I crawled in our tent each night planning what I would do if say a hippo disturbed us in the night. Hippos it seems kill the most number of people every year in Africa, so when I heard the hippos calling to each other at night in Mlilwane Nature Reserve in Swaziland I …

Our camp on the third night was supposed to offer us with plenty of cheetah sightings but somehow we missed out on that and the nearby leopard. Pulling into our fourth and final camp we were simply exhausted of sitting in the car and were quite pleased to find out that this camp not only had a resident lion pride but also offered bike tours through the bush…so we signed up.
The bike ride was easy enough, just making our way through the bush and through fields. We took in a bit of education, learning that the buffalo would eat the grass in front of us even though it tasted bad because they were so big they had to eat anything …

When the hostel sign said, “Tonight, Free Dinner!” we were expecting meat from the braai (barbecue), so when we saw a large three legged cast iron pot on the coals we were a bit confused.
Like settlers during America’s westward expansion, Dutch settlers in South Africa brought their own form of cooking, potjiekos which survives today as a traditional Afrikaner cooking method. Very similar to a stew in the United States, potjiekos is a dish of meat and vegetables slow cooked over the fire in a caldron that we would call a “dutch oven.”  Essentially a layered stew, the cast iron pot sits on the coals for several hours without opening the lid.
Starting with a layer of meat and potatoes on the bottom, the …