Animals and people that make your trip to South Africa utterly unforgettable

The many colours of South Africa

South Africa is known as the rainbow nation, a phrase that emerged with the new South Africa in the 1990s. I was a student when post-apartheid South Africa came to be and I remember well the desire to visit a country that I found fascinating but had been off limits until then. I finally made it in 2008, passing through for a few days on my way home from Mozambique.

It didn’t disappoint. I may have only spent a few days around the suburbs of Johannesburg, but I found a country and a people that even were better than I imagined. The history and experiences of its people may have still been relatively raw, but they were no longer blinking in the bright sunlight but opening up the country and its riches to visitors. The Apartheid Museum was tough but educational. Soweto was hard but its people were nothing short of uplifting. I learned about Lucy and the history of the human race at the Cradle of Humankind. I felt emotional every time I was addressed as ‘sister’.  And I got to Kruger National Park to watch the elephants elegantly dance their way from one tasty patch of trees to another, babies and all.

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