I can’t claim to have been to even a tiny percentage of the area shown on this illustrated map covering Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho. I have merely visited Cape Town and Johannesburg. But even in those two developed and westernised cities, I found it to be a land of great contrast, hence why this postcard in particular stuck out to me.

         While I’ve only been on safari in Kenya, not in the countries on this map, the ‘Big Five’ remain the same throughout Africa, even if the landscape is vastly different. I have heard from friends who have visited Kruger Park and stayed in a treehouse, and from one friend who even spent three weeks travelling around on safari in a Jeep, sleeping in tents on top of the Jeep! Both trips sounded so intrepid and I’d love to do something similar. We did “walk wild” in Lewa Conservation Park in Kenya for 3 days, involving sleeping in tents in the wild, while protected from lions and other predators by 20 or so local Masaai men, which was a fascinating experience as we learnt so much about tribal culture from spending so much time with them.

         What I like most about this postcard is the abundance of nature and the relative lack of human interference, if only the same could be said for some other more developed countries.