Preparations

In some ways preparing for this trip is slightly easier than a ‘normal’ round the world gap year.  For starters, we are (initially at least) only going to one country and staying in one location (the safari training school) so there will be little to do regarding flights, planning which countries to hit when and at what time of year.  No issues with currency (we just need SA Rands) etc.  But we would need a student Visa and we would need to find a course that would accept us!

Google through up quite a few course options; some just 1 month in length which would then give us a great experience and then leave us 11 months to explore Africa further (more of this later) and some which were a full 6 months.  Clearly the 6 month option was the most appealing.

Of the 6 month courses, some have an age limit of 39 and, alas, Rachel and I have now (just) surpassed that age so this then left about 3 courses to choose from.  Fortunately cost was not a driving force so we were able to choose the course that looked most appealing.  This turned out to be with Entabeni.

We downloaded the application forms, filled them in and sent them to the school.  Sarah at the school sent back an acceptance letter and we partied that night J  This letter then meant we could start the SA Visa application.  And did they need some info!

As the course is 6 months long we had to get a student Visa.  It is a fairly straightforward process, but they wanted loads of info.  We had to get a medical, chest scan, bank statements, police criminal check, amongst others.  It took Rachel a few weeks to pull all this together (fortunately she is very organised – I would have been much messier!) and then around the 19^th October we took everything to the SA embassy in London (on Whitehall, just off

Trafalger Square

).

To our utter surprise (we are used to British public sector bureaucracy so our expectations had been set!) everything went very smoothly and a week later the Visas came back.  This was on 27^th October, which just so happened to be a night we were out in London at our Lamb Tavern karaoke night, so again….we celebrated that night ;)

Visa info was sent to Sarah at Entabeni, course deposits paid, and as of the first week in November we were officially on the 6 month safari guide training course.