Klein Karoo & horse safari at Plettengerg Bay (no predators!).
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Those are some ripper shots @Gnik. Makes my travel bug come roaring back…
EDIT: BTW, what lens are you using?
Ta BG.
I bought a used micro-four-thirds Panasonic G85 leading up to this trip. The animal shots are taken with a 100-300mm lens (200-600 full frame equivalent), but this was a bit too long at the short end for KNP - a 100-400 equiv might have been better. For landscapes & city I had a 14-140 (28-280 equiv) and 12-35 constant f2.8.
The horse-back shots are with an Olympus Tough TG3.
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Wonderful pics, Gnik. I so much want to go back to Kruger, an extraordinary place.
And so accessible & easy.
We did a guided trip on an open safari vehicle in the NP itself, staying at the SANParks sites in self-contained bungalows. I hoped this would strike a balance between -
- The fully guided experience at the unnecessarily expensive private concessions around the park (as marketed by Australian travel agents).
- The self-drive experience staying within the NP (as done by South Africans - esp during school holidays).
And it was fantastic. Our guide had a seemingly supernatural ability to spot animals & predict behaviors that led to some amazing sightings including this where he spotted some Impala acting nervously & pulled over in the expectation we might see a big cat. Within a minute a Leopard stepped out of the bushes, circled our vehicle & lay on the verge purring & cleaning itself. We would have driven right by on a self-drive.
I’m definitely heading back that way.
Maybe the Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda / Uganda?
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For those who have travelled recently is alcohol worth buying when you return home or the prices at say a Dan Murphy better?
Sometimes, in countries with low alcohol taxes, the retail prices were often cheaper - and had a wider range- than the DF at airports here. That used to be the case with Switzerland. Could pack it with my consigned baggage and not have to queue up back here.
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Japan is INSANELY cheap for most brands of spirits, even at local shops or 7/11.
We usually get whatever you’ll be hard pushed to find in Oz, like decent tequila if you’re in Mexico/US etc.)
Other than that, I always felt Dans has become pretty competitive with anything that’s mass produced and it’s less hassle.
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It really depends on what type of grog you are referring to.
Spirits, especially Japanese whisky, can be bought at a song here - compared with back home. Saying that, the gap has been closing over the past decade - with the explosion of global interest in Japanese whisky. Still, significant savings to be had.
Standard bourbon is prolly 1/3 of the cost in Japan as in OZ.
If you enjoy nihonshu (sake), you will find it cheaper here as well. Same goes with umeshu (plum wine).
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pricey, but was an amazing experience:
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Coming to the end of another week in Beijing. Luckily the first few days had blue skies - the wind blew all the smog to Japan. So great conditions to visit the Great Wall at Mutianyu. Visibility severely restricted today.
A year ago when I was here, Beijing’s tallest building seemed about half finished - it’s completed now.
Off to Zhengzhou tomorrow by fast train.
Are you staying in Zhengzhou?
Pretty interesting place to spend a couple of days but many tourists bypass it.
Booooooooooooooooo!
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Yes. Third time in Z-z. Then going to Nanyang, which I suspect few BBers have hear of, let alone visited. I will let you know if there is a good reason for that 
What takes you to Nanyang?
Have done a fair bit of travel in the Henan province and have actually stayed a night in Nanyang at the Oriental Hyat. A little bit old and tired but for memory I think we paid about $30 for the night and was more than comfortable enough. Are you visiting Kaifeng or the Longmen caves whilst in the area? Both only about 35 minutes from Zhengzhou by HSR.
Are there any places in the world that you do not have expert knowledge about?
This trip is about business, so no sight seeing unfortunately.
Plenty of places I haven’t been still and have very little personal experience with. Have actually done stuff all travelling that involves flying East from Australia ie North and South America or the Pacific. Majority of of my travel has been to Europe, the ME and Asia and it helps having lived in Europe for a stint.
We try to get to China every year for a couple of weeks and despite travelling there heaps we have barely scratched the surface. We pretty much work to find our travel habits these days
Ain’t that the truth
We did that on our honeymoon, loved it!
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My brother and sister in law went to Uluru early October for 5 days, he told me about a dinner they had under the stars, reckon it was this.
They both said it was a great experience and really enjoyed their time there. 
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