Pilanesberg
Door: Elke
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Elke
23 April 2012 | Zuid-Afrika, Pretoria
After having breakfast in our lodge in Jo’burg at 7, we made our way to a supermarket to get the necessary provisions. The supermarket much resembled an American one and was located in an American style mall. Since we arrived there about 30 minutes before it opened, we had a cup of coffee or tea at one of the coffee shops in the mall, which had about 15 waiters available to wait on about 12 tables (without any customers except for our group).
After the practicalities had been taken care of we continued our way to Pilanesberg National Park. We stayed at a tented camp. The tents were what we in Holland would call ‘bungalow tents’ that were erected over an elevated concrete floor that probably had to keep out crawling animals and keep our feet dry in case of rain. It had a wooden door, two beds and a fridge that was about as tall as I am. Now that is my kind of camping! The only thing was that we still had to go to centralized toilet and shower facilities, but luckily without the typical role of toilet paper, as that was provided.
After settling in we had our first game-drive in the Pilanesberg park, which had a beautiful landscape. We were all very excited that literally within minutes after entering the park we saw an adult rhino with a little one less than 10 meters away from our truck. At this point I would like to briefly draw your attention to the word ‘truck’, as this apparently touches upon a very sensitive matter for some. I had the tendency to call it a bus (since it was big, had 4 wheels and sitting in it felt like sitting in a bus), but I now know that I was wrong. As far as I understand the difference between a bus and a truck is the suspension (consisting of a pneumatic system in busses and of springs in a truck), and the bodyweight of the drivers (being high for bus-drivers and within acceptable ranges for truck drivers (according to Louis that is)). Anyway, the penalty of calling the thing a bus was 5 rand per offence, so at the end of our trip I felt the moral obligation to tip our ‘truck drivers’ generously :). In addition to the rhino’s, we also saw giraffes, impala’s, zebra’s (plains zebra’s, which are not plain, but, contrary to the mountain zebra’s, they live in the plains), wildebeest, and warthogs that day.
Our camp was surrounded by fences. These fences kept the large and dangerous animals out, but the smaller innocuous animals freely roamed the grounds. When we were sitting in front of our tents, enjoying the nice and quiet evening Marleen mentioned that she heard a horse and what do you know… 5 seconds later a zebra was walking past our tents and started grazing right next to us. Later that evening impala’s passed by as well. During the night, 12-year-old Heather also heard some wicked animal. When her mother was gone to the bathroom, she got startled by an unknown sound. When her mother returned, she asked what it was, after which her mother replied “Don’t worry, that was just Elke coughing”. See, for the three weeks leading up to this trip, I had been haunted by a non-stop dry cough that was so bad at times that I would start gaging. It was hard to believe for some that my coughing at the start of the trip was nothing compared to the coughing I had been doing before, but clearly it was still bad enough to make me sound like some rabies infected wild animal :s.
At the airport in Jo’burg it was immediately clear that Willem and I were the least prepared couple of the group. Initially we booked a trip to Kenya and Tanzania, but this got cancelled at the last minute because there were not enough participants. We only received confirmation of our booking for the current trip to South Africa 8 days before departure. While I was finalizing my thesis, not much time remained to read up on things. Quite frankly, I barely knew what we were going to do and see. I figured I would go with the flow, get on and off the bus (that should be called a truck) when I was told to, and just see wherever they would take me. All other group members on the other hand had already been in contact with each other and had read up on everything. This made Willem and me feel a bit embarrassed, but during breakfast on the morning of the second day in Pilanesberg we heard Magda mention that something on the breakfast menu was different from what she read in the menu during dinner the evening before and then we realized that it would not have mattered what we had done to prepare for this trip, it would never have been good enough to keep up with this kind of preparation.
We had another game drive in Pilanesberg that day and when it came to spotting animals, Willem and I also seemed to do a bit worse than some of the other members of our group. Every time I had the courage to share what I thought was the name of the animal that we saw, I ended up being wrong, so when I thought I saw some goose-like bird, I figured it would be best to keep quiet, but of course that was the only time I was right, because it indeed was some type of African goose. Quite frankly Willem and I were not that interested in birds anyway, except for the ones that had ‘vale kuif’ in their name. As you can guess, the two of us noticed ‘vale kuiven’ all over the place. The fact that at least one of the other passengers overhearing us believed the bird we saw to be a ‘vale kuif’ and actually pointed this out to her husband as well, shows how good she was at judging characters.
During the game drive, we were also introduced to the concept of ‘African massage’. With every little bump in the road the truck would shake considerably (I was told that due to the springs this was quite a bit more than it would have been with the pneumatic system of a bus). All this shaking resulted in a full body massage. One can argue the comfort of this type of massage, but when offered the choice I’d prefer to be shaken not stirred. And anyway, I was quite happy that the African massage did not, analogue to a Thai massage, entail an African mama walking up and down our spine.
After the practicalities had been taken care of we continued our way to Pilanesberg National Park. We stayed at a tented camp. The tents were what we in Holland would call ‘bungalow tents’ that were erected over an elevated concrete floor that probably had to keep out crawling animals and keep our feet dry in case of rain. It had a wooden door, two beds and a fridge that was about as tall as I am. Now that is my kind of camping! The only thing was that we still had to go to centralized toilet and shower facilities, but luckily without the typical role of toilet paper, as that was provided.
After settling in we had our first game-drive in the Pilanesberg park, which had a beautiful landscape. We were all very excited that literally within minutes after entering the park we saw an adult rhino with a little one less than 10 meters away from our truck. At this point I would like to briefly draw your attention to the word ‘truck’, as this apparently touches upon a very sensitive matter for some. I had the tendency to call it a bus (since it was big, had 4 wheels and sitting in it felt like sitting in a bus), but I now know that I was wrong. As far as I understand the difference between a bus and a truck is the suspension (consisting of a pneumatic system in busses and of springs in a truck), and the bodyweight of the drivers (being high for bus-drivers and within acceptable ranges for truck drivers (according to Louis that is)). Anyway, the penalty of calling the thing a bus was 5 rand per offence, so at the end of our trip I felt the moral obligation to tip our ‘truck drivers’ generously :). In addition to the rhino’s, we also saw giraffes, impala’s, zebra’s (plains zebra’s, which are not plain, but, contrary to the mountain zebra’s, they live in the plains), wildebeest, and warthogs that day.
Our camp was surrounded by fences. These fences kept the large and dangerous animals out, but the smaller innocuous animals freely roamed the grounds. When we were sitting in front of our tents, enjoying the nice and quiet evening Marleen mentioned that she heard a horse and what do you know… 5 seconds later a zebra was walking past our tents and started grazing right next to us. Later that evening impala’s passed by as well. During the night, 12-year-old Heather also heard some wicked animal. When her mother was gone to the bathroom, she got startled by an unknown sound. When her mother returned, she asked what it was, after which her mother replied “Don’t worry, that was just Elke coughing”. See, for the three weeks leading up to this trip, I had been haunted by a non-stop dry cough that was so bad at times that I would start gaging. It was hard to believe for some that my coughing at the start of the trip was nothing compared to the coughing I had been doing before, but clearly it was still bad enough to make me sound like some rabies infected wild animal :s.
At the airport in Jo’burg it was immediately clear that Willem and I were the least prepared couple of the group. Initially we booked a trip to Kenya and Tanzania, but this got cancelled at the last minute because there were not enough participants. We only received confirmation of our booking for the current trip to South Africa 8 days before departure. While I was finalizing my thesis, not much time remained to read up on things. Quite frankly, I barely knew what we were going to do and see. I figured I would go with the flow, get on and off the bus (that should be called a truck) when I was told to, and just see wherever they would take me. All other group members on the other hand had already been in contact with each other and had read up on everything. This made Willem and me feel a bit embarrassed, but during breakfast on the morning of the second day in Pilanesberg we heard Magda mention that something on the breakfast menu was different from what she read in the menu during dinner the evening before and then we realized that it would not have mattered what we had done to prepare for this trip, it would never have been good enough to keep up with this kind of preparation.
We had another game drive in Pilanesberg that day and when it came to spotting animals, Willem and I also seemed to do a bit worse than some of the other members of our group. Every time I had the courage to share what I thought was the name of the animal that we saw, I ended up being wrong, so when I thought I saw some goose-like bird, I figured it would be best to keep quiet, but of course that was the only time I was right, because it indeed was some type of African goose. Quite frankly Willem and I were not that interested in birds anyway, except for the ones that had ‘vale kuif’ in their name. As you can guess, the two of us noticed ‘vale kuiven’ all over the place. The fact that at least one of the other passengers overhearing us believed the bird we saw to be a ‘vale kuif’ and actually pointed this out to her husband as well, shows how good she was at judging characters.
During the game drive, we were also introduced to the concept of ‘African massage’. With every little bump in the road the truck would shake considerably (I was told that due to the springs this was quite a bit more than it would have been with the pneumatic system of a bus). All this shaking resulted in a full body massage. One can argue the comfort of this type of massage, but when offered the choice I’d prefer to be shaken not stirred. And anyway, I was quite happy that the African massage did not, analogue to a Thai massage, entail an African mama walking up and down our spine.
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
