My Solo Trip to South Africa

this morning a leopard dropped a dead Antelope out of a tree onto the ground next to me and now I am splattered with Antelope blood welcome to South Africa [Music] foreign [Music] good morning from Cape Town after a couple of weeks exploring in Namibia which was amazing if you didn't see that video I'll have it linked up here or down below I've flown to South Africa to spend a week exploring here I'm spending a few days in Cape Town and then I'm going to be flying to the Kruger National Park are

a to visit Sabi Sands which I will talk about more when I get there I'm staying on the waterfront here in Cape Town And to be honest my first impression is that it reminds me of San Francisco this morning when I woke up there was this foggy low Marine layer and there's lots of shops and restaurants I have an incredible view from this room which I was not expecting and I'm super happy with my choice to stay in this area so the first thing I have planned here in Cape Town is a private tour I thoug

ht about renting a car but they drive on the left side of the road here and that made me a little nervous so I've hired a private guide for half a day to take me down to Simon's town where the boulders penguin colony is and down to the Cape of Good Hope The Boulders penguin Colony has a pretty incredible origin story because this Colony started in 1982 with just two breeding pairs today it consists of around 3 000 birds and they're under the protection of the cape nature conservation because the

species is on the verge of Extinction [Music] after spending some time with the Penguins we drove down toward the Cape of Good Hope which is the very tip of the peninsula if you come to Cape Town you have to do this drive and you'll probably see some ostriches along the way foreign [Music] then heading back toward Cape Town we drove the famous Chapman's Peak Drive this is considered one of the most spectacular Coastal drives in the world the road was hacked into the near vertical face of the mo

untain so you feel like you're hanging over the water and the views are outstanding [Music] once back in Cape Town I stopped in Beau cop a neighborhood known for its colorful homes and I've heard a few different explanations behind why the homes are painted so bright one is that homeowners painted them bright as an expression of Freedom another explanation is people just bought whatever paint color was cheapest regardless this neighborhood has a lot of history and they're even walking tours you

can take here to learn more about it something else in Cape Town that's an absolute must is a trip up the table Mountain aerial Tramway when I went up it was completely clouded in at the top which was actually really cool because I got to stand above the clouds and then about 30 minutes later it opened up and holy cow I think Cape Town wins for the most scenic big city I have ever been to the views you get up on the mountains around this city on this Coast are unreal another popular thing to do

here is hike lion's head this is an iconic feature of Cape Town which you can see here they're ridges circling around it that you hike up you can even see some tiny people standing on the top this was on my list to do but the morning I was going to do it it was cloudy and completely rained out and I wouldn't have had any views so I guess I'm just gonna have to come back and do it next time [Music] I've made it to Sabi Sans and I have so much to tell you about this area Sabi Sans is a privately o

wned Game Reserve in the Kruger National Park area of South Africa and it's considered by some to be the best place in the world to spot the big five which is lion leopard Rhino elephant and buffalo and the unique thing about Sabi Sans is it shares an unfenced border with Kruger National Parks you get all of the wildlife of Krueger flowing freely in and out of this land but because this is a private reserve it doesn't have some of the rules that Krueger does and I talked about this a little bit

in my Namibia video the difference between a private game reserve and a national park in National Parks you can't enter until after sunrise and the gates close at Sunset so you miss out on all of that animal activity really early in the day and heading into the evening you also have to stick to designated roads in a national park which means you're limited to what is visible from the big roads and elusive animals like leopards don't tend to hang out next to the road we're on a private reserve yo

u can drive any time of day you can stay out at night hunting with the Lions if you want you can also drive anywhere on the reserve so you don't have to stick to a certain Road also the only way to get into a reserve is to stay at a lodge there and drive with their guides so you're not going to be dealing with crowds which isn't to say that national parks are a bad idea I had a fantastic time at Atasha in Namibia I actually think the best thing to do would be to do both if you have the time in y

our trip so I'm going on game drives for the next few days in the mornings and afternoons and I'm excited to see what we find Sabi Sans has a reputation for big cats especially leopards which is part of why I came here leopards are notoriously elusive animals that can be really tricky to find and get close to but Sabi Sans fulfilled all of my leopard dreams we spent a morning tracking a mother and her older male Cub through the bush these animals are so beautiful and they weren't bothered by us

either they walked right up next to our vehicle multiple times the only time they actually looked at me was right here as I was getting this shot and I was silently losing it I mean look at that and it's incredible how quickly they move they never seemed to stop for more than a few moments before continuing on their way I can see why it's so hard to spot them [Music] so I just had probably my craziest Safari moment to date we found an older male leopard cub this morning with a dead Antelope up i

n the tree that he was eating and we got to get so close to him to watch him up in the tree but then he dropped the antelope all the way to the ground right next to us and I am now splattered with Antelope blood it's all over my jacket it was on my camera lens it's wild that you have no idea what you're going to see when you go out on these drives every day every single one is different [Music] foreign over the next few days I did game drives at sunrise and sunset and saw everything really Lions

giraffes zebras so many elephants one morning we had a herd pass right through us which was really spectacular elephants are exceptionally intelligent animals they're one of the few species that can recognize itself in the mirror they're the largest land mammal and can eat up to 600 pounds of food a day but all of that considered they're afraid of bees African farmers will raise these to keep elephants away from their crops and another great sighting one morning at breakfast after a sunrise gam

e drive a herd showed up at the river outside of the lodge and talk about the best breakfast view of your life [Music] I also saw wildebeest one morning there was a group of them that had the Zoomies they were chasing each other around and around in circles taking up their heels it was so cute I was really impressed with my tracker and my guide they were knowledgeable on every animal and it was incredible how the tracker could pick up footprints in the dirt and know what animal it was how long a

go it was there what direction it was going we stayed out after dark every night and there is just nothing like being out in this landscape after the sun goes down so the lodge that I'm staying at here is londelosi I'm at the vardy camp I looked at so many lodges in Sabi Sands before deciding on this one and honestly they all looked phenomenal I don't think you can go wrong with any of them but the room here is what really sold me on this one because I have this enormous Deck with a plunge pool

in loungers overlooking the landscape it is what you dream of when you think of going on an African safari the property is beautiful the service has been phenomenal and it's all inclusive so you get a morning and afternoon drive with a guide every day all of your meals this is not sponsored by the way it might be my new best place I've ever stayed [Music] my final afternoon game Drive was one of the most exciting of the entire trip we went out in the afternoon looking for lions and found a pride

napping lions are kind of funny that when they're sleepy you can pull up right beside them and they do not care and the reason we can get so close to all of this Wildlife is they see the vehicle and everyone in it as one thing so they don't see us as individual beings and don't see us as something they could attack so we sat with these lions and hung out for a while all the way until Sunset and then just after the sun went down they got up and started moving into the thickets and again this is

one of the reasons it's so exciting to be able to stay out after sunset with these animals so we drove with them all the way into these really thick bushes and found that a couple of lions from The Pride had just killed a warthog there was this lioness with this chunk she was carrying around so we followed her and watched her eat it and you know how sometimes at night the sky is so gradually getting dark that you don't really notice it until all of a sudden you're like oh it's completely black o

ut here when the Lioness was done eating her chunk of warthog the guide turned all of the vehicle lights off and that's when I had the realization that I was sitting in a completely open vehicle in complete darkness surrounded by hungry Lions it was thrilling it was still totally safe but wow what an adrenaline rush yeah today is my last day in South Africa which is so disappointing because I don't want to leave one week was definitely not enough if you come try to come for two weeks at least th

is country is so beautiful and it should absolutely be on your travel list if it's not there already if you are thinking of planning a trip here one of the biggest questions I was asked by all of you on social media and my family and friends and even locals while I was here in South Africa is how do I feel about traveling alone here South Africa has been on my travel list for a while but I never thought I would come here solo I always plan to come on a tour but then I signed up for this Namibia

tour and Namibia borders South Africa and I couldn't bear to come all this way and not see South Africa too so that's how I ended up here by myself the reason I never planned on this being a solo trip and I think the reason I received so many questions about this being a solo trip is South Africa does have some safety concerns and speaking to people I know who've lived here or who are from here or locals while I've been here everyone's had the same sentiment of uh you've got to be careful not so

much at nice private lodges like this but in the city I had a great time this was definitely a successful solo trip for me if you feel hesitant about coming here by yourself or you don't have a lot of travel experience in places where you would have to be more cautious I would recommend coming on a tour and honestly you get so much out of Tours so I think a tour would also be super awesome I hope you guys enjoyed coming along with me on this one and I will see you next time bye [Music] foreign

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