On Sunday, 2 December people came out in their numbers to witness the official festive season lights being switched on at Cape Town’s iconic Grand Parade.

“Welcome to the Nottingham Road Hotel. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay. Oh, and if you happen to see Charlotte, please tell her that room service is only until 12.”

Probably the least of my travel gripes, but still undeniably annoying, is trying to understand local dialects. I found this particularly difficult in Vietnam where, quite often, locals would leave out certain letters. So the simple sentence, “Do you want ice coffee?” would become “You ant I café?” I think the hardest part of trying to converse with someone who speaks like this is not the intense listening you have to do, but rather the constant smile that you have to fix to your face.

As much as I love Kruger, I think I’ll be saving up to spend my next game-watching escape in the 11 500-hectare Thornybush Nature Reserve, which is large enough to be home to vast quantities of game, including the Big Five, but small enough to be quite easily traversed if you’re up for a number of game drives.

Not even heavy downpours and a little bit of hail could stop beer lovers from taking part in the Cape Town Festival of Beer, the largest festival of its kind in South Africa. Held over the last weekend of November at Hamilton’s Rugby Club, the event stuck to its promise of titillating every taste bud.