My trip to South Africa with University Centre Askham Bryan

Hi! My name is Atlas Simpson and I’m studying Management of Animal Collections with Conservation (MACWC). This is my experience of going to South Africa with the University Centre Askham Bryan on a study tour!

Once we arrived in South Africa, we stayed in Markon just outside of Ezemvelo for 2 nights. It was there where we were introduced properly to our guides and we had our first game drives and bushwalks! It was so amazing to walk through the area just outside of our camp and see a troop of Baboons in the distance and a Hammerkopf nest just above where we were walking.

We learnt about all the different plants and even the snakes that we, probably quite luckily, didn’t encounter as it was too cold for them to be out in those months. The game drives there gave us our first sightings of Impala, Ostrich, Zebra, Black and Blue Wildebeest, Giraffes, and even the massive Eland. Back at camp, we also found the smaller things like praying mantises and very fluffy caterpillars which we were told not to touch so we wouldn’t start itching!

Our next stop, and probably my favourite, was Pongola where we stayed for 4 nights. The sense of community with the rest of the students on the trip really grew stronger while we were here, our tents were all quite close together and we could really settle in and spend the evenings playing cards or talking around the fire. We saw all sorts during the game drives! My guide for Pongola, Tanya, taught us how to use all our senses to track certain things, including leopards as the male’s marking spray smells like popcorn so getting a whiff of that on the gamedrives was always oddly exciting. We saw animals we hadn’t seen in Ezemvelo such as Hippopotamus, Waterbuck, Crocodiles, Hornbills, and an abundance of Nyala which grew to be a favourite amongst my group.

In the evenings, one of the staff who came on the trip with us took us out on walks through the camp to look for insects and arachnids and taught us how to use eye-shine to locate anything we might not see just by looking around. One night, we even found a large black scorpion in a hole in a tree right by where we had been eating! It was so cool to see it glow green under Ultraviolet light! We were taken on a boat tour up and down the Pongola River and we got to see Jacana which are some of my favourite birds! There were also African fish eagles all along the river and I could really see their chestnut colouration under the sun even from a good distance away.

Then, for the first time in Askham Bryan’s history of South Africa trips, we got the pleasure of staying in a nearby community! We were split up into gendered groups and put in houses under the supervision of a family who had volunteered to look after us for 2 nights. My group got to help cook meals, wash the dishes, and then go out and play with the children that lived in the family’s land. They were so welcoming and we spent a lot of time sat outside under the stars listening to music and letting the kids play with funny filters on our phones.

Askham Bryan was also challenged to a football match and, somehow, we won! I say “we” but i didn’t participate on the field, it was much too hot for me, but I did my best as a cheerleader with the community kids on the sidelines instead! We had been asked to bring donations along with us on the trip so we could give them to the Creche where children would learn their education from a young age. We brought simple books in English, colouring books and pens, footballs, puppets, teddies, anything we thought they would like, and then spent a good while outside in the playground playing throw-and-catch or going on the climbing frame with the kids.

Then, we moved off to Moholoholo which was absolutely beautiful! We got to visit the Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Hoedspruit where they told us all about their efforts to look after the thousands of vultures that were being poisoned by poachers. The day we got there they even released a vulture back into the wild after successfully rehabilitating it after it was poisoned.

They also had my most favourite African bird there, the Bateleur eagle! I got to see one really close in an enclosure which was a highlight, as I was sure I would only get to see one on the wing hundreds of feet in the sky above me. They had cheetahs, hyenas, rescued white lions, leopards, and even a pair of honey badgers! We also got to take a trip to the Hoedspruit Reptile Centre where they have some of the most venomous snakes in the world such as the Black Mamba, the Boomslang, and the Gaboon Viper which I personally find fascinating. They had tarantulas and millipedes too which most of the snake-fearing people on the trip spent their time admiring.

The time we spent back the camp was taken up with DND sessions or swimming in the pool at the top of the camp which was so fun and helped us cool down after being in the sun. We stood in silent groups searching for Bush Babies and Genets as soon as it got dark and some people were incredibly lucky to get to see a Genet walk past their lodge one night! After 2 nights we were headed to our final destination in South Africa: Kruger National Park!

Kruger was completely mind-blowing! I thought that the animals we saw in Pongola were impressive, but Kruger was a whole other level! Not even 10 minutes into driving into the park and massive Spotted Hyena walked across the road in front of us before vanishing into the bush. We saw families of Elephants before we even reached out camp, including little calves! We were unimaginably lucky during our 3 days in Kruger because we got to see the Big 5 (Lions, Leopards, Elephants, Rhinos, and Buffalo) almost every day! We also spent some time just hanging out in our gameviewer while a pack of about 5 or 6 African Painted Dogs sunbathed not even 10 feet away from us! They are such a rare animal to see because of how few there are across the entire park, and we got to spend a good 20 minutes with them before moving off so other buses and gameviewers could see.

There were so many times where we’d pull over and watch very young Spotted Hyena puppies play in the dirt and nap in the sun or annoy the poor adults by running all over them, it was super cute. Speaking of babies, we even saw a pregnant Leopard in the road one day, just crossing without a care in the world and a very round belly.

As a bird nerd, I can’t not mention the birds we saw on our drives too! There was a Giant Kingfisher sat on the railing of one of the small bridges we had to drive over, and we could get up super close to him before he flew away. The amount of beautifully coloured Bee-eaters we saw was stunning, but they would always fly away before I could get a good photo of them through my binoculars using my phone as it’s a very tricky thing to set up! One slight jolt or shake of my hands and the focus would go fuzzy! It was frustrating but the photos I did manage to get made it all worth it in the end. Thankfully, my friend took a photo of a Lilac-Breasted Roller which was my self-given mission for Kruger and sent it to me once we were home again. On our final night in South Africa, our guides set up a Braai for us which is pretty much a superior barbeque that you get as soon as the sun comes out in England. A Braai is a tradition that brings friends and family together to celebrate food, culture, and camaraderie which was certainly felt in all of us.

Going to South Africa was one of the best things I have ever done, and it has made me realise that there are options for working in the animal sector that are not just in England. Being a guide at Kruger would be such a dream job for me! I love talking to people about animals and the passion that our 4 guides talked to us with made me want to do it even more! I can’t wait to go back in July of 2026 and do my part in teaching the first timers what I learnt last year, especially how to find eyeshine and identify insects and birds.