Into the Jungle...

If there is one place I have always wanted to go, it is Africa. I may have spent my teens dreaming of Europe, but I have spent my life following a career which will, hopefully one day, see me working there. If Paris was a dream, then Africa was an ambition.

Four and a half months after I walked off a plane, my Australian Adventure complete, I was walking onto another one, determined to start my African safari. I was booked with a program to volunteer in a South African game park, doing, what I imagined, was important conservation work. It was going to be my dream come true. I have often heard that Africa is littered with broken dreams. I don't think that's really true. I think maybe it just changes them, makes them something real. Africa changed me. Just not in the ways I expected. I guess that is one truth you can hold for all travels. It will never be what you expect.

I woke up at 2am for my 5am flight to Sydney. We left Sydney at 10am, having gathered most of the group, and spent 14 hours on the plane. After waiting another 2 hours on our arrival, we got on a bus for another 6 hours to reach our destination. By the time we arrived, it was midnight, and I had been awake for 32 hours, due to my inability to sleep on transport. The fact that I didn't have a bed when I arrived momentarily threatened to cause me to collapse on the floor in the middle of camp, whether to sleep or cry could be debatable. But a blow up mattress was quickly found a squeezed into one of the huts, and I was asleep.

I remember a few hazy things from my first few hours, in my semi-concious sleep deprived state as we drove to our camp. The first would be the light. The quality of the light was very gold, and very pretty. Even at midday it was slanted. The second came when we stopped at a service station along the way. A truck was parked there, with several cars on its back. After watching it for a bit I realised there were people sleeping in the cars on the truck! The guides assured me this wasn't totally normal, but later experience suggests that it possibly is. The third thing I saw was when the bus slowed to let a small animal get off the road. I later learned it was a genet. As the animal lover I am, this is what I had come to Africa for, and I was very excited. This very brief introduction probably sums up South Africa quite nicely. Its natural beauty, its people and its wildlife. It was the last I had come to see, but it was the second which had the greatest impact.