For a while now I’ve had this vision of what I want for my next holiday – I wanted mountains (snow-capped, if possible), a crystal clear lake, ancient evergreen trees so tall you have to keep yourself from falling over backwards when looking up at them, and lots of clean, fresh air. Having recently watched The Proposal, my mind immediately fixed on the idea of Alaska. Until I did some research.As far as I could determine, there is no easy way to get to Alaska from South Africa. I would need to take a plane to the US (most of them stop over in Europe first), then fly to Anchorage and from there take a chartered plane or boat to my final destination. This one-way trip alone would take close to three days and cost more than two trips to either Europe or Australia. So Alaska was definitely out.
My next thought was Switzerland, but I’ve already been there and life’s too short and money’s too scarce to visit the same place twice when there are still so many other places I want to go to.
“Surely,” I thought to myself, “there must be somewhere close by that would at least partially meet my requirements?” And, of course, there was. Only five hours’ drive close by, in fact.
And so it was that I woke up on a Monday morning to the sounds of ducks quacking outside the tent and cicadas singing from the forest canopy above. The Sabie river in full flow was burbling on our doorstep and the sun was only just peeking out from behind the mountain. This was not Alaska, and it wasn’t Switzerland, but I couldn’t possibly ask for a more perfect place in which to spend my holiday.