What would I normally be doing at 6.03am on a Monday morning? Probably sleeping, maybe thinking about getting up to go to work. This morning, I've already been up for over two hours, been out walking for a little over an hour, and am currently standing with some of my fellow students in the middle of the African Bush looking at, and discussing Eland (a type of Antelope) dung - apparently it's very similar to giraffe dung, but giraffe dung has a groove in it and ...

Today sees me leaving Cape Town for a month and heading off to Kruger National Park to complete my Safari Guide training course. Over the last week in Cape Town, I've taken a conscious decision not to fill every minute of the day doing touristy things. I've spent time just exploring the city, spending time at the beach, going to the pub to watch the Newcastle game, buying the remaining items that I need for the rest of the trip, in general just chilling out. I...

I wasn't having any luck trying to go whale watching - the trips of out Cape Town had been cancelled as the whales were now too far away. So, I decided to head a bit south of Cape Town, to Simons Town, a historic naval base, which was nearer to where the whales currently were. Simons Town is also one of the only places where you can see African Penguins in the wild. So the plan was to try and go whale watching, but the backup plan was to go and see the penguins ...

One thing that strikes me wherever I travel in Africa is how happy the majority of people seem. Despite any hardships, they seem genuinely pleased to see you and talk to you. It's a strange situation where in shops, bars and restaurants, a lot of the time the staff are the most friendly and helpful that you could ask for, but they obviously haven't received European or American customer service training. Yesterday I headed down to the V&A Waterfront for a bee...

The flights were pretty uneventful, but felt long - 17 hours flying time, with a few hours stopover in Dubai. My flight had been due into Dubai just after midnight with my connecting flight due to leave just before 4am. I had been expecting to spend a few hours in an empty airport with maybe one coffee shop still open - how wrong could I be! With flights scheduled to depart all through the night, the airport was busy, all the bars and restaurants doing a busy tr...