Our Bucket List African Safari Holiday
written by Dexter and Alice (aged 12 and 10)

We flew from London Heathrow to Johannesburg. We stayed in the most amazing place for our first night.  It was Nelson Mandela's old house.  We went to the swimming pool to have a splash - but it was absolutely FREEZING!  We played with a ball for a while and then went up to our hotel room.  We had a sneaky jump on the beds and our room was so cool!  We met our group and had a lovely drink and lots of delicious food. 

The next day, we woke up and had a tour of the special hotel.  It was really good to learn all the facts about Nelson Mandela. We headed onto our minibus towards our new place to stay.  On the way we stopped at the coolest service station and saw a massive lake with wild buffalos, antelope and zebras! And this was just a service station! There was a playground there and Dexter managed to cut his head on the slide - typical!

We arrived at our Camp and were greeted with lovely pink drinks. Our camp was called Camp Bethal and it was absolutely magical.  We stayed in a Safari tent with real beds inside and we had heated blankets (which were so warm). We loved them so much that we had to buy our own!  We settled in and met our camp chef who was so good and he asked us to tell him exactly what we wanted to eat while we were there.  We tried all of the adult food as we wanted to experience some South African dishes.  

Every day we did different things.  We had to wake up very early in the morning some days, which meant we got to watch the peaceful sunrise.  Some days we had to wake up at 3.30am or 4am!! But it was always worth it. We had a group leader who was really friendly and he taught us so many things about the animals and nature of South Africa.  

On the first day of our Safari, we entered Kruger National Park and the first thing that we saw lying in the middle of the road was two male lions! This was a once-in-a-lifetime moment and we couldn't quite believe it! After that, we carried on driving and found so many more animals.  We saw zebras, giraffes, elephants, birds, buffalo and some more lions.  

We saw so many incredible things while we were there, including some animals feeding on other animals.  We saw lots of baby animals like lion cubs, giraffes and elephants - they were so cute!

We did lots of other adventurous things too like a zip wire across a canyon which was so cool (Alice got stuck - lol)! And we were taken to some really interesting places, like a Cheetah rehabilitation centre and an Elephant sanctuary where we got to feed elephants. While were there we visited a few different types of restaurants and did some shopping too.  We bought lots of souvenirs! 

Alice - "We really enjoyed meeting new friends and can honestly say this was a holiday we will never forget for ever!"

Dexter - "It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and we all would highly recommend going on one for yourself."