more touring in SA

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More Touring SAI had 13 days in January with my daughters, Serena and Amanda, and 9 days in April with my friend Molly and her daughter, Hallie. We focussed on African wildlife...hoping to see all the BIG FIVE. (Rhinoceros, Water Buffalo, Lion, Elephant, Leopard) The leopard eluded us, but as you can see there were lots of other interesting species to watch. We barely saw a lion (or lioness) at Pilanesberg, but it was exciting. Driving through the park there, you must look out for other cars pulled over to the side of the road for possible sightings. People in 5 or 6 cars were looking out over a field of long grass; and we saw nothing. We waited patiently while a group of wildebeast walked through the field...then later one lonely wildebeast came along. He made some noise...to let the others know he was coming...and I swear he sounded worried. Suddenly two lions rose up and chased him. They chased him down the length of the field, and then gave up and lay down. They had expended energy for no more than two minutes, and decided it was in their best interest to rest. Our guide in Madikwe in December had explained that lions chase after prey only when the chance of success is very good. What we saw this day corroborated this. Those lions calmly sat there after they quit chasing the wildebeast. We could barely see the lions in the grass, and, when they were chasing the wildebeast, we really couldn’t see them at all..it happened so fast. But it was very exciting..worrying about any animals who might come through, unaware (as far as we could tell) that two lions were in the grasses. We were glad that the wildebeast got away..but then we kept saying we wished we would see a lion or a leopard make a kill.

January trip:

Our first day we went to the Lion Park in the Pretoria area. Definitely not a game preserve, definitely more touristy. But we wanted to pet a real lion cub! And they were so cute! Also got to feed giraffes and ostrich. The giraffe used his long tongue to take the food off the palm of my hand. Serena, Amanda, and I spent the next two days in Pretoria: going to movies, clothes shopping, and walking to the Union Buildings (ministerial government buildings) to see the new Nelson Mandela statue. The clothes I bought with the help of my daughters are the clothes I have received the most compliments from my co-workers at the school. It must be because they are in fashion, very tight pants..which are too low for me to feel comfortable in..so I had to buy a long tank top to make sure no flesh shows.

From Pretoria we rented a car to stay at a lodge near Pilanesberg Park. One evening we went on a guided game drive, but the rest of the time we drove our rental car. Pilanesberg is circular..in the remains of a very old volcano crater, with beautiful panoramic views. It was like the movie Out of Africa where there were so many animals grazing together. Near the game preserve is the opposite of peaceful beauty; Sun City. Sun City is a developed casino/hotel area which is about two hours drive from Johannesberg and Pretoria. We decided to go to the water park. It was really fun, and relaxing. The themed park is called The Lost City and it felt just like a themed park in the US. At our lodge we found a pamphlet for a nature sanctuary an hour’s drive away, so one morning we hiked around there. This was January, mid-summer, so we started early so that we were done before noon.

After 5 days there we headed back to my village (souvenir shopping on the way.) Serena and Amanda stayed there for 5 days and visited my school, Sele Secondary, which was starting 2014 school year. They helped with sorting and labelling books for the library. The previous PC volunteer, Shilpa, had received boxes of donated books from her mother’s friends in New Jersey. I am still working on finishing up shelving them and getting a circulation system going. (My daughter, Serena, is getting a masters in Library Science so she had some good suggestions on how to get Sele’s system running easily.)

The day we drove back to Pretoria to catch their flight home, we got stopped by a traffic cop. It seems to be a pattern for the last day of being a tourist! The “we” who has been driving has been my daughter, Serena, who is a good driver. But the traffic cops on this busy stretch of road routinely set their cameras to catch people not slowing down fast enough as they enter the reduced speed zone around KwaMhlanga. Zanele, from my host family, was in the back seat and when she saw the ticket Serena was given, with a R250 fine; she told us we could get it reduced*

March/April trip

The trip with the Archers, Molly and Hallie, had no meetings with traffic cops but some trying driving conditions. The roads in Pilanesberg Park had suffered from heavy rains in February, so we (we shared driving) had to dodge a lot of ruts. To get to our lodging in Polokwane we had to drive through heavy rain in the dark, and Molly drove gripping the steering wheel on that bad night. And the road returning to my village had so many pot-holes, we couldn’t avoid every one; and we slammed into one really hard. We returned the rental car in one piece..well, one piece under the bumper was hanging and needed to be reattached...Oh, and then it was missing a rear-view mirror because I backed into a post at our lodge. (at night, and I was backing in driving on the right side of the car..so that’s my excuse!)

On this visit to Pilanesberg, we saw lots of hippopotamus. I’m sure they were there on my previous visit, but Hallie had a good eye for the little bumps in the water, and once we found them, we stayed a while to watch them rise up and snort or snuffle or whatever it was they did. We would often find them in the dusk, so I was never able to get a good picture. We had good weather most of the time, occasionally got chased by a thunderstorm in the afternoon, but again Pilanesberg had the most panoramic views, especially with the thunderclouds coming in.

We left Pilanesber after 3 days and spent 2 days in Madikwe Game Preserve at the same bush lodge I visited with Susi and Greg Freed. Here we had the guided game drives morning and afternoon, and we saw wild dogs which we had not seen in Pilanesberg.

After the game parks, comes the new adventure! A zip-glide canopy tour over a river canyon. This region reminded me of Idaho or Washington’s mountain creeks, we crossed the canyon 11 times, but I can’t really tell you what the water below or the waterfalls looked like from the cable I zipped across on. I kept my eyes focussed on Johannes or Victor, our guides. Zip lines are not really that scary to someone afraid of heights..because there are three connections from my harness to the cables, so there was never a time I would fall without a fail-safe. Still, I didn’t savor the scenery as much as Hallie did. I had a great time, and would even do it again! There are four others in South Africa. What an unusual experience to add to my slate of “I toured SA” items. Never would have guessed I would have done it...and Serena and Amanda were amazed I did it. I wonder if I would have said “No way!” to my daughters if they would have proposed it...while I agreed to go with Molly and Hallie.

Molly and Hallie came to my site for the last 2 nights of their stay. They got to see the first day of school when Term 2 started, then we had to take off for Pretoria..but no traffic cops found us that day!

*The speeding ticket. Everybody said I should pay less than R250 ($25) for the speeding ticket. It seemed as if it was expected to challenge it and that R100 was more in line. Maybe we were targeted for a high fee because we looked like tourists in our rental car. I don’t know.

Tumi Lekoape, the English teacher, lives near the police station in KwaMhlanga so she gave me a ride when we left school at 11:30. We went to a different building first, where people got the paperwork to reduce the ticket. After an hour there, she drove me to the police station. It was a little past 1:00 and we were told that the cashier’s desk wouldn’t open until 2:15, after lunch. I told Tumi to leave me there, because I knew how to take the taxi back from there. Then when the cashier arrived, he looked at my paper and said, “We don’t recommend you do it this way. You need to go to..such and such office.” I worried that I was going to have to walk to another building and it was getting late in the afternoon, but he sent me down a back hallway to an office where a woman barely glanced at my ticket and cancelled the whole thing. She had to send me down the hallway and another hallway to find a copy machine that would make a copy of the ticket with the big X over it. So I didn’t have to pay a fee at all.

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Photos

Lion Park
Unknown tourist, but I got up close and personal with this giraffe!

Union Buildings in Pretoria
Pretoria is seat of executive branch..ministry offices. But CapeTown has the Parliament (legislative) and another city has the judicial seat. Note the statue recently erected

Sun City Resort
The theme is The Lost City. Water park is here. Very First World.

My host family
Zanele in red, ugogo Martha, and Jane in yellow. And ugogo Caroly with the hat!

Zebras
The e in Zebra is short not long. As is the letter Z is called ZED.