Radiac's South African Adventure, Part 2

• 16th October 2004 at 11:15

African Adventure Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

While the rest of the flight was uneventful, the landing was quite alarming - I'm sure planes shouldn't be able to turn at 90 degrees without falling out of the sky, and when we actually hit the runway, we rocked violently from side to side and I thought I was going to die. I clearly didn't, but by the time we had come to a stop, it was raining. Joke.

And the jokes just kept on coming - since I pretty much had the last seat on the plane, I ended up on the last bus to the terminal, and then because the person in front of me had a problem with his passport, I ended up being the last one through customs. However, Paul was there waiting for me, and we set off for home. Unfortunately he didn't know the way back, so we turned the wrong way out of the airport and went for 30 minutes in the wrong direction before we noticed. By the time we got back to the right road it was dark, and then rather than getting to the house in the suburbs, we ended up right in the centre of the city, and had to drive for 20 minutes back out again. When we were nearly there, we stopped and bought some tomatoes from the local 'Pick n pay'. I love the names of the shops here.

I don't think we're heading into the city any more...

I had heard stories about security in South Africa, and Amke's house is no disappointment. First there are 3 electric security gates into the complex, followed by a padlocked cage to keep the car, and a large security gate over the front door to the apartment. Every door and window then has bars across it - for example, the back door has a locked security gate, and the door itself is not only locked, but it is also padlocked to the wall. But the house is very nice and is quite spacious.

Once I had put my bags down, we went out again for dinner and my first real experience of Johannesburg. The main difference between here and London seems to be that there are security guards everywhere. Most of the shops and menus are essentially the same - we went to somewhere very similar to Cafe Uno, so I had pasta. And then we went home and I was in bed by 11pm, which was only 10pm UK time - reasonably early, I thought...

Day Two - Saturday 16th October

Unfortunately, what I had not really considered was that we had to leave the house at 8. And, as many people can testify to, to be ready by then I'd better get up at about 5.30. Having calculated this the night before, I had set one alarm for then, and another for quarter of an hour later, just in case. But like I said, in my mostly-awake-for-36-hours-and-the-rest-of-the-week state, I didn't really consider the fact that I'd only get 6 hours sleep and have to get up at 4.30 UK time, so it was a bit of a shock when my watch went off at what was to me 4.45. I'm still tired.

Anyway, I figured out how to use the shower, got dressed, packed some stuff, and left the house with Paul, following Amke's cousin Albert and his wife Elma in their fancy truck thing. We drove north-east for a while, and stopped at a small shop at the side of the road, selling biltong.

Biltong is a South African delicacy. We eat chocolates, they eat this - dried, shredded meat. Note how 'meat' is not animal specific, so I'm still not sure what it came from, just that it was something that bleeds. And I believe my bit had hair.

After this short stop, we set off again, and a couple of hours later we arrived at Pilanesburg National Park.

This place is great. It sits in between mountains created by volcanic activity, and is brimming with wildlife. I saw elephants, giraffes, zebras, hundreds of random (apparently exciting) birds, cheetahs, wildebeest, things I kept calling wildebeast but apparently weren't, impalas, baboons, hippos and rhinoceroses (rhinoceri?). I also saw a lion, but sadly no tigers, so I haven't disproved the theory, yet. During the day we saw two male impalas fighting over the ladies (they have harems of up to 30, apparently), a rhino protecting her baby, and a hippo grazing a few feed away from a hide, zebra wandering on the road past our car, and a giraffe that thought about coming up to us at a restaurant, but decided against it.

A zebra

Hippos

A giraffe

A rhino and her baby

An elephant

It was awesome. Sure, it's a typical touristy thing, but I don't care. Doing the safari thing was one of the top things on my list of things to do in my time off, and I am really glad it was - although some people said it was nothing special, just like visiting a zoo, it's actually more like visiting a zoo in 125,000 acres of fantastic national park, driving all day with nothing but beasties, mountains, trees and grass for as far as the eye can see.

And to finish the day, Paul and I drove to a hotel thing just around the corner to stay and eat food, and having done that, I'm now off to bed.

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