Southern Africa - Animals and Food! (Patreon)

Okay, so let's be honest that the animals are the star of the show in any Africa trip. The smartest thing I ended up doing - that I would recommend to anyone doing a trip like this - is to bring a wildlife guide with me and checking off the animals in the book as I saw them. This is still one of my favourite artifacts to look back on, and it made the trip feel like a Pokémon adventure :)

(That's me in the front in blue trying to see a secretary bird)

I also jotted down which animals I saw on which segment:

This is only one of the parks we visited but I highly recommend it!

I also managed to grab a discarded flamingo feather in Walvis Bay (Don't tell on me)

I made the intentional choice to not even try to get good photos of these animals (I didn't want to manage the gear and stress over it), so I don't have many to share, and the drives were WAY too bumpy for sketching. But they were still very fun and cherished memories. We saw all the big 5 👍

A hilight was being able to kayak up close to all of these seals in Namibia...

As we got to South Africa things got a lot more colourful...

Most exciting thing I spotted: Secretary Bird :)

Biggest Regret: No Cheetahs :(

The food ended up being a bit disappointing, but I still had a fun time recording it. I don't feel like I really got deep into local cuisine on the tour and I don't think what I had was representative of what the region has to offer.

(Finding vegan biltong in Cape Town was by far my biggest win. And I didn't eat the game meat, I just drew it because the page was looking so lonely!!!!)

Most of these last ones were in Cape Town which was a bit more culinarily engaging. But overall it was definitely worth it to experience all of this wildlife in person.