So after nearly 5 months of travelling through 14 countries and kissing giraffes, riding ostriches and swimming with sharks, my Africa trip is finally over.

South Africa has been interesting...it definitely does not feel like Africa. Its very modern and clean, and is more reminisent of America than anywhere in Africa! The garden route has been beautiful though - the beaches are stunning, but very similar to home in that they have the same colour sand, the sea is cold and the crashing waves are similar to Devon or Cornwall (though they generally are bigger waves!). The most beautiful (and unspoilt) part of the Garden Route is Tsitsikamma National Park - on one side you have Natures Valley with a 3km beach and crashing waves, surrounded by sand dunes, and then on the other side of the beach, you have a big lagoon with calm water surrounded by mountains. On the other side of the Park, you have Storms River Mouth, which is again a really unspoilt bit of wild coastline. At Storms River, we stayed in a rest camp with a little cabin on the coastline, so we went to sleep each night listening to the sound of the crashing waves. We also bumped into two of my friends from the trip, so had an amazing braii with them (Julie's sister's boyfriend is South African, so the meat was cooked to perfection!). I also went kayaking with them across the rough sea and through the river - the scenery was beautiful as it was through a gorge, and we also went for a little swim and jumping off rocks. It was lovely to see them and was really good, silly fun! Jules and I were going to kayak together, but the instructors didn't seem to trust us, so we had to go with each of them instead!

From Storms Mouth, we went onto Port Elizabeth where we said goodbye to the car - there's nothing really much in PE, but it was quite nice going for a nice, chilled walk alongside the beachfront.

Our next destination was Jo'burg and Soweto. The tour of Soweto was really interesting, as we just expected a poor township but some of the houses are amazing and bigger than ours at home! There is a variety of rich, middle class and poor areas which surprised us, but was good to see. We also went on a tour of Nelson Mandela's house, plus saw Desmond Tutus home, so an interesting afternoon. I'm not a massive fan of Jo'burg (even though I haven't really been here much), as it doesn't seem to have a particularly nice feel to it. We went up Carlton House (which is the tallest building in Africa) in the middle of the city which was cool, and we're going on a city tour tomorrow before I fly home, so maybe I'll like it more after that. I also saw Soccer City (their main football stadium which hosted the World Cup Final in 2010) which was cool (you know me and my stadiums!).

I've spent the last four days in Northern Drakensburg whilst Mum went on safari in Kruger. ND has been my favourite place in South Africa - its a massive mountain range on the edge of Lesotho, its beautiful and so unspoilt. I spent the first day on a tour into Lesotho, it was quite amusing as Lesotho doesn't have a border point on that part, so we got stamped out of SA and were officially in no-mans land for a day! Lesotho was beautiful, the countryside is amazing and its all so natural, its been one of my favourite places in Africa. There is no tourism at all, so we walked through villages, saw shepherds herding their animals, men travelling on horseback, traditional healers etc, I loved it. We even tried their local maize beer, which I was dubious of (after my experiences of Shake Shake in Zambia), but it was more watery and not as bad, but a sip was more than enough!

I also went on a hike up to the Amphitheater mountain which was an experience - half of it was rock climbing and the way down consisted of climbing down 20m ladders over sheer cliffs! The views were stunning though, so definitely worth the effort!

Anyway, I'm now back in Jo'burg and need to go and pack ready for tomorrow. I hope you've enjoyed the blogs (even if you've just skimmed through some of my ramblings!), I've loved Africa but I'm definitely ready to leave. Its been too hard to pick favourite places, as everywhere has been so different from each other - the northern parts (mainly Sudan and Ethiopia) were so untouristy and "the real Africa" with lots of dust roads and poverty, whereas the southern part has been much more touristy, but with all the animals and amazing experiences. I'd definitely recommend the trip and Africa to all of you, it really is a brilliant and diverse continent. I'm looking forward to catching up on the David Attenborough's series when I get home!

I should be more accessible on email etc during this next week, so it'll be great to hear what you've been up to. I'm off to India in just over a week, so the travel blogs will resume from there!