So with the Kerala campaign out of my hand, let us focus on something that’s actually going to happen, the next big adventure! Enjoy this teaser video I made because I’m so psyched! Let’ meet South Africa.


Safari photos were borrowed from South Africa Tourism.

 

ON 2013 TRAVEL HIATUS

This is going to be my first BIG trip after coming home from my RTW in 2012.  As many have noticed, I’ve not been posting so much in this blog. And if I did, they’re a bit “uninspired”.

That’s the truth. I’ve been uninspired the past year, with regards to traveling. I kept planning for the next adventure since I came back but nothing panned out. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll remember that there were talk of Russia and Scandinavia. And when summer passed, I shifted my attention to Australia and then frolicked with the idea of Mexico, which my sister eventually did instead. And so the whole of 2013 went on with few family holidays and trips with friends, but has left me a little underwhelmed, travel-ly speaking.

 

SO SOUTH AFRICA

It was totally out of the blue! I mean when I was doing the RTW trip, I thought about Africa, in general. But it was a huge continent that I decided it will have to be a whole long trip of its own, you know around the whole continent. So I never thought of going to a single African country. What a surpres! :)

One day in November 2013, while clearing my email inbox, I saw an airline anniversary sale of dozen destinations for only USD10. Naturally I couldn’t (wouldn’t) resist. I looked through the list and my eyes were immediately drawn to Johannesburg as this was the most exotic for me (others were Asian, US, and European cities). I went on to book and it didn’t even matter which date, I mean it’s $10 for 11,000km. I’m going to make time.

The system overloaded but I was persistent. I used both my mobile and laptop and finally, after over one hour of trying, it went through! The process is not only a matter of loading and reloading the pages, one has to choose a random date and wait for the system to give you feedback if there are seat available in your chosen dates. If not, the you try again. You wish they had this flexi-calendar showing which dates still have slots, but no-no-no. And it’s not like if you press back, you go back to the booking page. You’ve to go through a period of error messages. But in any case, we’re headed for South Africa!

South Africa Flag

I experienced an unexpected surge of delirium! I hadn’t felt this alive in a while. My heart pounding trying to fly out of my chest. I was silly happy for a week. And now, hours before I leave, it’s starting again!

 

PLAN and ITINERARY

I booked this 2 months ago but as usual, I don’t have a concrete plan yet. This is probably why randomness happened to me all the time. Some people call it irresponsible. Last week I started my research and I’m a bit rattled! Why do I do this to myself? I even almost missed my flight because I kept thinking I’m flying out on January 22, but actually it’s January 21! Tomorrow.

I do have a general plan, because I needed to make an itinerary when I applied for visa. Of course Filipino need visa to enter South Africa and of course, I’m going to make a blog post of it. So just hang on.

So roughly this is what to expect of my trip. I arrive and leave from Johannesburg so I will do a loop, clockwise, I think. There will definitely be Kruger Park safari and shooting (photos of) the  Big 5 game. There will be wine drinking for sure. Skydiving, great white shark cage diving, ostrich riding, and whatever the great Rainbow country has to offer. Oh gosh, I need to take a deep breath. I just heard that it’s the season for Blue Shark. So it means there will be normal diving as well. I am having a bit of a packing dilemma. Cameras? which one to take? how many?

But it will all work out I’m sure. So come, join me in my wander South Africa! Follow me at facebook, twitter, and instagram as I attempt to post live updates as much as possible – #wanderlassZA