Name: Donald MacSween Age: 24 From: Ness, Isle of Lewis Previous experience of foreign travel: I was in Ireland once!

At the beginning of 2008 I was part of the Sear gu Siar team that visited South Africa. I was so delighted to go to Africa as I’ve always had a big interest in animals and the environment, and I thought that Africa was the best place in the world to experience this – and boy was I right! We were travelling around southern Africa for two weeks in Botswana and Zambia, where I saw many spectacular scenes and animals.

It was the heat that first hit me when we reached Johannesburg, it was almost 20 degrees Celsius at midnight – that was a shock to the system, especially having just left Ness at the beginning of February! It was hard sleeping through the night with the heat, but it was particularly tough during the day as it could reach 40 degrees at times. We couldn’t even get any respite while we were travelling, when you opened the window of the minibus at 70 miles an hour, it was like the blast you get when you open a hot oven!

Anyway it was the animals that were the most important thing for me, I don’t think I will ever forget what it was like when we saw an elephant for the first time, I think we must have spent quarter of an hour just looking at it – then we saw about 6 or 7 others a mile down the road! I think we saw about 50 throughout the whole trip and they are certainly amazing and dangerous animals. TJ the driver was telling us how many people the elephants and hippos kill each year, and it’s a lot more than lions and rhinos. It was not just big animals like rhinos, elephants and giraffes that we saw, there was also a lot of different creepy crawlies including the armoured cricket and the massive millipede. However I think that over all the weird little creatures I saw over the trip, the best was the dung beetle – what a strong wee beastie!

I do not know what the best thing I did over the trip was, everything was getting better and better as the days went on. I suppose some of my highlights were seeing an elephant for the first time, visiting Victoria Falls, being that close to an wild rhino, and the screams that came from Niall when we were chased by monkeys. They say the camera never lies, but I am sure that those monkeys were about 6 foot tall. They certainly gave Niall and Alastair a fright anyway!

We had a great team in Africa, I think we all got on well – however, this was tested the day Janice Ann spent over an hour in the shower! I am so thankful that I’m not married!