I did the safari thing a few years back and wasn’t that impressed. I stupidly thought it would just be Mrs FD romantically travelling through the African plains.

Nope it was like the M25 with big 4×4’s full of shouty Americans, and lots of pollution etc.

Well we stayed in a private reserve near Kruger for our honeymoon (10 years ago) and I can honestly say it was amazing.

We had dawn trips around the reserve in a jeep and on foot(!), just a few of us at a time, plus on most days we drove our own hire care around Kruger with just the two of us. Never found it too busy – even when lions were spotted there were only a couple of cars stopped.

As others have said not all zoos are the same. There is a fairly new zoo not far from me that takes in rescued bears and lions.

Its still kind of shite that they are in a cage but the alternative was killing them as circus lions and bears don’t tend to do too well in the wild.