I made a mistake whilst doing the little research for this trip that I actually have done. I looked into all the dangerous animals I might meet – specifically hippos after I encountered one last week whilst building a bridge.

Oh, and there’s a hippo which lives under where the bridge will go

Me – 2015

Just makes falling in the river even worse

Unconcerned friend – 2015

Sorry, I got distracted by pictures of a hippo.  Anyway, having done a bit of research into the dangers of hippos I cocked up. I noticed a similar article about Africa’s most dangerous large animals which sounded interesting. My curiosity got the better of me and before I knew it I’d spent half an hour researching all the things that are going to try and kill me over the next few months. There are quite a lot. In fact, there’s more than quite a lot.

There are spiders, snakes, elephants and many, many others. And none of them seem to be of the soft and cuddly variety. Although if an animal were soft, cuddly and hideously dangerous that would probably be worse. Like the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. If you don’t know what that is, feel ashamed, then Google it and educate yourself. Then you can carry on reading this. But the rabbit should take priority.

I decided I should forget about all the dangerous things, so bought my plane ticket instead. I’ll get to Cape Town on the 11th April, and then start trying to sort out useful things like getting a bike. Sadly, Turkish Airlines don’t carry bikes for free and paying the extra might have doubled the cost of the bike so here’s hoping South Africa has a good second hand bike market.