Almost everyone we spoke to before we left the U.S. said we’d love Durban, although they didn’t say why exactly. The largest city in KwaZulu Natal, Durban is also an important manufacturing hub and port. It boasts a sub-tropical climate and some of South Africa’s best beaches. I didn’t know much about the city when I decided to plan that leg of our trip. And apart from a visit to Shakaland,...

We saved our last full day in Cape Town for our trip to the winelands. Our first stop was at KWV Wines, a 90 year old brandy and wine emporium located in Paarl, one of the three popular wine regions – Stellenbosch and Franschhoek being the other two. We did a tour of the cellars followed by a wine tasting, then a brandy and chocolate tasting. I don’t like chocolate so that pairing...

The day before we left Makalolo Plains was bittersweet. The team had made us feel very welcome and we knew we had made friends. On top of that, we had spent many hours watching animals at close range, and that was better than the best episode of a nature program. Towards the end of our morning drive, Godfrey spotted this hippo that appeared to sleeping at the edge of a...

If we didn’t know it before, we discovered pretty quickly that no two game drives are the same. While Makalolo Plains keeps a log of the types of animals that guests could probably see, they cannot offer a guarantee. During September, the time we in Hwange National Park, there was a high probability of seeing elephants (100%), zebras (100%), waterbucks (100%), widebeests (93%) and steenbucks (90%). But because of the...

With 30,000 elephants in Hwange National Park, it wasn’t whether we would see any, but when and how many. As the sun came down on our first game drive, cold and blackness overtook us immediately. Dixon pulled out his infrared flashlight to make it easier to spot the animals that had become invisible to us. We were following the flashlight as it darted from side to side, and complaining, through...

On the afternoon of our second day, we raced to the spot where Godfrey, our guide, had heard that a cheetah was seen. When we arrived, two jeeps of game watchers sat waiting patiently, eyes trained on a spot in the tall grass where the cheetah was supposed to be. We were looking at the same place for so long, I no longer trusted what I was seeing. Was that...

I’ve seen some spectacular sunsets but the ones I saw in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park took my breath away. Each evening, I looked forward to seeing a dazzling display of color as the sun stained the clouds pinky blue, gold, burnt orange, purple-red before settling into an inky-black. In all, it took about two minutes for the sun to drop completely behind the horizon and when it did, it dragged...

During our meetings in the months leading up to our departure, Sandra, Judith and I decided to identify our three ‘must-see’ places in South Africa. Soweto was on each of our lists. An abbreviation of South Western Townships, Soweto, is home to about 2 million people. It is recognized internationally as the seat of the Apartheid resistance, and for us, women of African descent, it holds a strong emotional charge. No...