The South Africa Wild Adventure trip fell short of my expectations. The trip itinerary that is advertised online is far different from the real experience. Firstly, this trip is advertised as a conservation and volunteering project, and I was really excited to take part in animal conservation. However, the "conservation" part of the trip involved about 30 minutes of filling a hole in the road with sand. This was the only conservation activity for the whole 15 days - we took no part in "anti-poaching" activities, as advertised. Additionally, the volunteering part of the project felt more like voluntourism. We spent about 2 hours at a child daycare centre on 2 occasions. However, we were not informed by Gap 360 prior to the trip departure how impoverished the community was and that most of these children are orphans who require basic things such as shoes and toothbrushes. If Gap 360 had mentioned this to us then we would have been of more assistance by actually bringing stuff that they need, and also be able to prepare some activities to do for the 2 hours - as on both occasions we spent the majority of the time trying to prevent the children from hurting themselves on the broken glass and the hazardous playground, rather than actually provide something worthwhile such as an English or maths lesson. There was a serious lack of structure in the "conservation" and "volunteering" activities. Worse still, Gap 360 pride themselves on not being affiliated with any companies that are involved with any forms of unethical treatment of animals. However, the game reserve where we stayed offers elephant-back safaris. We did not take part in riding the elephants ourselves, but the guides rode the elephants whilst we played football with them. Elephants are wild animals who should not be trained to play games for our amusement. Additionally, I was appalled at the amount of free time we had. This was advertised as an action-packed 15-day trip, but we only had about 7 days full of activities. The days without activities were advertised as quite full-on and exciting with bush drives and walks, as well as the conservation and volunteering activities, but in reality, we spent most of our time having to entertain ourselves with whatever books or card games we brought. I felt that advertising the trip as 15 days allows Gap 360 to increase the price, and £899 for a 2-week trip in South Africa sounds like great value - however, I felt like I overpaid for this trip and regret booking it. The staff on-site were lovely and so were the other people in the group, and some of the activities were very enjoyable, such as the trip to Kruger (which is advertised as 3 days but technically you only get 2 full days). However, I made the Gap 360 staff aware of my concerns during the trip only to be given patronising responses. They are not willing to take on board any constructive criticism and are not going to make any changes to the trip any time soon. Therefore, if you want to have an action-packed 15 days, and genuinely make a difference to the community by volunteering, and also gain conservation experience, then this trip is not for you and I would not recommend it.