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Published: June 17th 2017
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01 Our Tent
It didn't take us too long to work it out. Geo: -25.2174, 27.0071
Yay, I am pretty excited today because I am catching up with Lotta and taking 5 days of leave from work. This morning I packed the car as we were going to be camping for 2 nights at Pilanesberg National Park. Once I packed our room looked so bare. Paul gave me a demonstration on how to change the tyre should I get flat- fingers crossed I won't! After a few hugs and kisses I said bye to Paul and I was off. This is the first time that I have driven on my own in South Africa. I was feeling pretty confident though, as it will be during the day and I won't be driving in any towns, only through small villages and with the doors locked! A word of advice from Deon was to watch out for children and goats. It took me an hour and half to arrive at Sun Village, near Suncity where I would be meeting Lotta who is getting a bus from Johannesberg Airport.
When I was close to Sun Village I got a text from Lotta saying she was early as she had caught a taxi with some local ladies. As I
02 Our Vehicle
We are going to have so much fun driving around! drove into the carpark I immediately spotted her. There aren't many blonde people around here! It was great to see her again. We were colleagues at Barclay Primary School in London.
We had to quickly buy food for our camping trip as the supermarket was closing in about 20 minutes because it is a Sunday, so it was a quick catch up while deciding what to cook and eat. We were both glad to be able to choose from a variety of fruit and vegetables. Luckily we are both vegetarian, so it was easier to choose food. We filled the car up with petrol and drove to the nearby camp ground.
Ten minutes later we arrived at Manyane Resort which is on the edge of the park. We choose a site, pitched our tent, made up the bed and then went on a game drive. I was a bit nervous about driving in the park because of elephants. I am still not sure of the difference between a mock charge and a real one until it is too late!
We arrived in the park at 3pm and had three and half hours to drive around as the gate closes at
03 Bird
A Pied Crow. 6:30pm. If we are late, we will be fined. This was Lotta's first time in the bush, so she was really excited and I was excited for her. The pressure was on to see lots of animals!
Our first sighting was a white rhino and calf. We had found one of the Big Five in only a few minutes- we were off to a great start. We drove along Tshwene to Mankwe Dam. On our drive we saw many close sightings of lots of zebra, kudu, wildebeest, impala and warthogs. We also saw a huge large crocodile near the dam and nearby we had a glimpse of an elephant. There were lots of zebra, wildebeest and impala drinking on the other side of the dam. We sat in the hide for a little while and watched the various active birds.
We then stopped at the Pilanesberg Centre for a crème soda float. From their deck we saw kudus come to the mineral lick. From here we started to drive back towards camp via Nkakane, which was uphill. Along here we came across a rhino and had a very close sighting of it as it ate grass. Further along Nkakane we came
04 White Rhinos
Two white rhinos- a mother and her calf. to a small waterhole and in the middle was a lonely hippo watching us. It was now time to turn around and go back to Manyane Gate and start cooking dinner. On the way down the hill we saw the rhino again, still happily eating grass by the road. We passed by Tilodi Dam and in the middle there was a pod of at least 4 hippos. A few minutes later we were at the gate and then out of the park.
We got back and lit the fire, while waiting for coals we prepared lots of tasty food. We ate so well tonight, such a yummy BBQ dinner of – courgettes, mushrooms, haloumi cheese, peppers, gem squash, vegetarian schnitzel, corn and potato washed down with a few chilled ciders. There were plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow.
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