Original Story and Photography Published by: Qin Xie for Metro.co.uk
(Above) I loved going to the zoo as a child. Getting to see all the different animals in front of you, not just on the pages of an illustrated children’s book, is really exciting for a kid.
On early trips to safari parks in the UK, I got a taste of how those animals actually lived outside of cages. But it wasn’t until I went on my first safari about four years ago – a solo trip to Durban on the east coast of South Africa – that I truly understood how these animals lived in the wild. This year, I took my mother on her first safari and, as we discovered together, the experience is a lot more fun as part of a family.
Why Gondwana Game Reserve
When it comes to safaris, South Africa, a country synonymous with the Big Five, has plenty of options. Every game reserve and national park will offer a different experience – from the animals to the accommodation – so it’s worth doing your research ahead of time to find one that works for you. We were visiting Stellenbosch and Cape Town during our week-long trip in the Western Cape so it made sense to go somewhere relatively close.
Gondwana, which is about four hours’ drive from Cape Town, is near the start of the Garden Route so it allowed us to see that part of South Africa too. It also happens to be the only free ranging Big Five private wildlife reserve in the Southern Cape. The animals Unlike national parks such as Kruger, Gondwana is a private game reserve. This means that all the land and the animals are privately owned.
It’s a really strange concept to get your head around because the reserve is a massive 6,500 hectares (think 6,500 football pitches), and the animals are allowed to roam freely within that. But there are also fences and boarders around the property to keep the wildlife inside, though you’re unlikely to ever see them. The major difference between a private game reserve and a zoo or safari park is that there is almost zero intervention in the way the animals live.
