What’s The Plan For South Africa?

There has been lots going on travel planning wise in my world over the last few weeks!

First off I ended up booking a huge chunk of flights which will see me heading back to Asia for at least a few months in October, with Thailand, The Philippines and Indonesia being the main focus.

However there’s one destination which came out of the blue and was hurriedly pencilled into my plans – South Africa!

So what’s the deal? 

Why am I heading there and what can you adventures can you expect to read about and follow over the next few weeks?

 

An Unexpected Surprise

Well first of all I should probably fill you in on how the whole trip came about! South Africa has never been the top of my to do list – it’s not that I didn’t want to visit there, I just had other places which were a bigger priority and to be honest less of a detour to visit!

So why am I heading there now?!

Basically over the last month or so I’ve been working for Ticket To Ride Surf Adventures. It’s still something I haven’t really blogged about (I PROMISE there’s a post ready for next week!hahaha!) but the blunt summary of it was that I didn’t deal well with being stuck in an office all day so I quit…after 3 weeks!

Still the guys running the company are super sound and given my background in blogging, my photo skills and the fact we’ve teamed up to offer some of their stuff over at Epic Gap Year they offered to send me out to South Africa and join one of their surf trips.

…I’m hardly going to turn down that am I?!

Needless to say I booked my flights pretty pronto and I’m stoked to be spending just over a month out there.

 

J’Burg And Kruger

The parents have been kind enough to sort out some Gatwick parking and drop me at the airport (the joys of travelling with a surfboard!) and I’ll be jumping on a nice overnight flight to South Africa. The first stop of my trip is Johannesburg – where by complete coincidence my buddy Ally (who was my dive instructor in Phi Phi) is going to be too!

Since I doubt I’ll be down that end of the world again anytime soon I decided to bite the bullet and tick off a bucket list item I thought would take years to get done – an African Safari!

We’ll be heading out on a 4 day campaign safari through Kruger National Park where we’ll be trying to spot some of South Africas most famous residents, which I’m super stoked for! My camera kit will be locked and loaded and I can’t wait to be able to photograph animals like elephants, lions and giraffes in their natural habitat!

 

Cape Town

Following our safari we’ve got one more night in J’Burg before jumping on a flight to the coast – where the first stop is Cape Town.

With a week before our surf adventure kicks off I’ve managed to cram in a whole host of freaking awesome stuff to keep us busy. Again it’s all about the bucket list – with things like freediving with sea lions, paragliding and scuba diving with 7 gill sharks all on the schedule!

What I’m most stoked about though is finally getting around to doing something I’ve been dreaming about for years – SHARK CAGE DIVING!

Yup I’m hopefully going to come face to face with some wild great white sharks – I can’t wait to spend some time with these incredible and beautiful creatures.

Am I scared? 

To be honest not really – I’m just super excited to witness their speed and power up close!

For the limited free time we have in Cape Town (we have a seriously busy schedule!) we’ll be relaxing at Stoked Backpackers in Muizenberg – which is a stones throw from the ocean and some beautiful surf spots, so I’ll be pretty much surfing whenever I can!

 

 

Surf Surf Surf!

Of course the main aim of this trip is to spend some serious time in the ocean! Ally will still be tagging among for a weeks surf camp but as for me I’ll be joining the first part of Ticket To Rides 10 Week South Africa Surf Adventure.

It’s a pretty freaking epic road trip along the South African coast stopping off a some world famous surf breaks, exploring more of what South Africa has to offer.

Over my few weeks with them I’ll be receiving surf coaching from some of the areas top professional surfers, getting stuck into some of the incredible community projects they support, checking out some of the local attractions (including touring the wineries, hiking Table Mountain and even bungee jumping!) and generally not straying too far from the beach or the waves!

Although as part of the trip we’ll be covering surf spots including Cape Town and Plettenburg it’s the last stop of my time with them that I’m most amped for – Jefferys Bay!

J’Bay is one of the most famous point breaks on the planet and home to the ASP World Tour event – I can’t wait to paddle out there and sample why it’s so famous…reeling right handers! It’ll no doubt be a month that makes my surf buddies uber jealous and all in all this unexpected trip should result in heaps of photo, blog posts and general awesomeness!

 

Overall it’s pretty much my ideal way of travelling – the perfect mix of surf, adventure and culture…bring it on!

 

Have you visited South Africa – any highlights or things I should try and pencil into my trip?