South Africa Beats Out New Zealand for Most Beautiful Country in the World!
South Africa has done it again! Cape Town often makes it onto lists of the best places to travel and the most beautiful places to travel but this time around our entire, beautiful country is getting the nod. Too often the rest of South Africa is overlooked and it’s high time that someone recognised the breathtakingly beautiful game parks, majestic mountain ranges and cool urban spaces that can be found around South Africa. South Africa featured at the top of the list of The 20 Most Beautiful Countries In The World published on Buzzfeed and even better, beat out the likes of New Zealand, Brazil and Australia.
According to ‘Travel Guru’, a BuzzFeed community user, South Africa deserves to be at the top of the list for many reasons. “This country sweeps international travel prizes and has travellers raving about its beauty so much that it has the highest repeat tourism of any long-haul destination in the world! Considering how crazy people are about the place, it’s not surprising that South Africa takes the top spot in the beauty stakes,” said Travel Guru. On this new list, South Africa takes the top spot with New Zealand at number 2, Kenya at 10 spot, Brazil at 16 and Australia at 19. Fellow African country, Namibia also makes the top 10 and scores the number 5 spot.
Our beautiful sea life is also to thank for scoring top marks in this list. “South Africa also has an astonishing variety of marine life, with almost twice the number of marine species as the whole Mediterranean in a coastline only 2000 miles long. It’s the best place in the world to view whales from shore, and to swim with great white sharks. The world’s largest migration of ocean life occurs here, and is one of the two largest migrations of any kind on earth, ” said Travel Guru.
Of course, let’s not forget about the game parks! Travel Guru rates these as some of the very best in Africa. “With some of the finest national parks in the world, including the Kgalagadi, Isimangaliso, Hluhlue Imfolozi and Tsitsikamma, South Africa has been rated the finest wildlife destination on earth and is Africa’s most biodiverse. That’s much of where it leaps ahead of other countries in terms of beauty. What’s better than a great sunset? A great sunset with giraffes or elephants in front!”
As for the mountains, it’s not all about Table Mountain all of the time. Travel Guru is mentions marvels like the Drakensberg calling it, “one of the world’s most beautiful and utterly distinctive mountain ranges.” Other ranges that get a mention include The Swartberg or ‘Black Mountains’ which Travel Guru pegs as housing “one of the most beautiful cave systems in the world.”
You can see the full list here so click through to see who else we beat on our way to the top!