Cathy's family on her father's side are from South Africa, and with her cousin Sam getting married to Esmarie it was an opportunity for the far-flung family to gather for a holiday. 

Cathy and I flew into Johannesburg and driving to the Drakensberg Mountains,  then all the way to Cape Town and the seaside village of Hermanus.  As someone who doesn't drive a lot, it was interesting to spend so much time driving in a foreign place with regular cows and goats near or on the road.

On the way between Drakensberg and Cape Town we spent two nights at the Addo Elephant park.  It also has many other animals, which were all amazing, but elephants are one of those animals that I care about especially.  To be amongst them was something I'll never forget.

A slight sadness is that in South Africa, as in much of Africa, elephants don't live in the wild.  They are confined to parks like this.  It is a huge park, but it has a massive fence around it, so they aren't free to come and go.  They drink from wells dug for them rather than natural rivers.  There was something all too human about the experience.