It's Decided

We had always planned to spend the first 6 months on this course and then travel around Africa (mostly Southern) for the second 6 months.  We were (notice the past tense!) going to buy a 4x4 in SA and then use this to explore.  Well, plans have changed recently for a number of reasons - firstly, cars (and especially 4x4s) in SA are damn expensive.  In the UK the second hand car market is dead and you can pick up a decent car for a few grand, but here you are talking 10-15k just for a standard 4x4.  Secondly, we are doing so much on this course that there will be very little left to see from a wild-life perspective, and compared to many other places in the world Africa is not as culture rich (well, not to us anyway).  Thirdly, Africa is an expensive place to travel around with limited backpacking venues (we knew this before we came but it's got worse since we've been here with some countries starting to charge extra for foreign tourists..Zim!) Finally, we've just finished 10 days leave in Cape Town and we miss cities too much :)

We have been offered a guaranteed work placement by the course for 6 months, which could lead to a permanent job as a safari guide but we are declining this.  Apart from the pay being crap (well, zero for the first 6 months and not much more than 500 per month thereafter),and conditions being 'basic', and the treatment of staff in some reserves being 'suspect' (by all accounts), we have come to realise that we love to visit the bush but couldn't stay here 24-7, 365 days of the year.  We had heard all this before we came out and that is why we always saw this as a 6 month holiday with the very remote possibility of staying on but this was always very remote.

Course is doing exactly as we wanted though, so no worries there - just couldn't work in this industry :) Would rather earn lots of sterling in the UK and visit different countries at our leisure.

So in June we'll be heading back to the UK (as originally planned) and for the second 5 months we'll be trying pastures new.  Top of the list at the moment is S.E Asia (maybe for a month or 2), China and South America (catch up with Rach's brother in Argentina then explore some of this continent for a few months).  Plans still to be finalised because there is still so much of the world we want to see and there will only be 5 months left to do it in :(