Exclusive interview with The Great Family Leap
The Great Family Leap has been back in the Netherlands and we had the pleasure of interviewing Taco and Petra from The Great Family Leap about their adventure. How is it to be back in the Netherlands? “We are settling in quite well. It is great to have our own home and possessions back. We love the fact that we have a good extra long bed and the kids are thrilled with all their toys that they re-discovered. What surprises us most is the sheer amount of things that we have: so many books, so much kitchenware, so much of everything. And we miss the sun already, it is so grey and wet here in...
Read MoreCounting down – the last week of our trip
What will we do in the last week of trip? That was the question we asked ourselves recently. Do we want to end the trip with a big bang and do something special, or should we take it easy and take the time to prepare our return back home? We explored many options: going back to the Big 5 private game reserve, fly to the Durban coast for a dose of sun or beach, take a trip to Mauritius for even more beach and sun, drive to Madikwe game reserve, fly back via Jordan, take a last minute trip to Namibia or maybe fly back home a few days earlier. But when we stopped thinking and started to feel...
Read MoreExploring the Mpumalanga Lowveld
After our adventures in Swaziland we travelled back towards the Kruger National Park. We ‘promised’ our grandparents to find lions and leopards and Kruger is the best place to try this if you are on a self drive safari like us. The first few nights we stayed in Marloth park, one of the residential areas bordering Kruger, where you can rent a holiday home complete with animals like zebra and giraffe wandering around your house. Thereafter we drove for four days through the southern section of Kruger where we stayed in Lower Sabie, Skukuza and Berg & Dal. It was good to be back...
Read MoreShopping in Swaziland
From previous trips we had lovely memories of Swaziland; friendly people, beautiful nature and great souvenirs. In fact most of the souvenirs we have at home did come from Swaziland. So when we returned to South Africa we all took the opportunity to visit Swaziland once again. We booked five nights so that we could really relax and take in the sweet Swazi landscape, and of course have time to visit the craft centres and buy souvenirs. There are some pretty amazing women empowerment projects in Swaziland that have over the years trained and organised women to create the most beautiful and...
Read MoreThe parks of Zululand
Zululand covers a major part of Kwazulu-Natal and is the closest you get to real Africa in South Africa. The region is dominated by one tribal group, the Zulu, and it is here that you still see many traditional villages with roundel huts and where you need to take great care in driving, as even on the highways you will find cows, goats and people walking. But we did not come to Zululand for the culture or traditions, but we came here to visit some of the great parks that are home to Zululand. After we left Nambiti we first had a farm stay booked in Vryheid; an area where the Dutch farmers...
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