South africa photos

In South Africa, contrary to what people believe, wild animals are not 100% free to go wherever they want. For both Africans and animals safety, they are gathered in several national parks in which each visitor has generaly two opportunities:

• To drive through the trails with his own car
• To take part in a game drive in a range rover driven by a ranger who knows the place and the animals behavior.

To begin with, we experienced the first option in a small park. There, we discovered our very first giraffe and antelopes as well as a wild dog...

A few days later, we went to the famous Kruger park which is 20.000 km². We observed plenty of antelopes among which the Impalas nicknamed "Mac Donald of the bush" by the rangers. Despite the very high temperature (40°C), we managed to see a few elephants, zebras, Waterbuckss, warthogs...

A week later, While we were heading south towards the Indian ocean coast, we voluntary made a slight detour to criss-cross the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi trails. This park was much nicer than Kruger thanks to the luxuriant vegetation. There, we encountered several species we hadn't seen yet such as Rhinos, Gnous et Hyenas.

Along the Indian coast, we rented a boat so as to discover the fauna living in Santa Lucia's lake. Hippos, Crocodiles and several birds awaited us...

Finally, during our stay in Cape town, we first saw dassies up table montain. Then we discovered Ostriches, lezards and pheasants in Cape of Good Hope natural reserve.

But traditional Africa is not only black communities. As a matter of fact, everybody knows that white people colonized South Africa.
This colonization started in Cape town and its vicinity, and notably the city of Stellenbosh. The first settlers (Dutch people) built churches, schools and houses with whitewashed walls and stinkwood roofs. Everything has been kept.