I was very excited about going on a safari at Pilansberg National Park in South Africa, although I admit I was a little worried. I'm not exactly what you'd call an outdoorsman. I'm more of an indoorsman.
Plus, I had this vision of a safari that was from the 19th Century. I pictured Rudyard Kipling riding an elephant, holding his rifle in his hand, waiting for the natives to point out where and when he could shoot a lion.
The 21st century reality is a little different. No more riding elephants. Now you ride in an open air jeep or mini bus. No more rifles. Most of the animals on this land are on the protected list.
But you still have a native guide, and you still see wild animals in their natural habitat, and you still better be careful. There are signs all over the place that remind you not to exit your vehicle. These animals won't hesitate to injure, maim or eat you if you tread on their turf.
The first thing that struck me when we started traveling through this area was how breathtakingly beautiful it was. This was a national park, but it was nearly untouched by man. There were no paved roads at all. We were in the bush. And the scenery was spectacular. Here are a few examples of what I mean...
Our guide asked us what animals we wanted to see, and of course, I said lions. He sighed when I said it, because they are the hardest to find. After lions feed, they can sleep for days at a time. He didn't point this out to us at the time, but his car had also been attacked by lions just a few days earlier. When we stopped for lunch he showed us the claw and teeth marks on the bumper.
The rumor at the gate was that the lions had freshly killed an elephant--so we headed to the spot where the elephant corpse was rotting in the African sun. It wasn't hard to find, we just followed our noses.
Sure enough, hiding in the bush, protecting her kill, we found a lioness. I'm posting the picture of the lioness and not the kill, because that was a little gruesome. We were no more than twenty or so yards away from her.
The rest of the morning, we saw a parade of other animals. Some moved too fast to photograph, and others went into hiding when they saw us, but I did manage to snap a few shots of the other animals we saw.
Here are a few more...
This antelope (called a springbok) was just a few feet away from us. We had some for lunch our last day in South Africa. Yummy.
The hippos were not thrilled to see us. They started making this loud bellowing noise that scared the crap out of me.
The Wildebeast stared us down too. You can see how close we got. An entire herd was about a hundred feet away.
We had the most difficult time finding the elephants. They had headed up to the hills. I never really pictured elephants up in the mountains, but sure enough, we spotted them in the distance--about twelve of them. It wasn't until an hour or two later that we came up close.
We knew not to spook them, because a bull elephant had charged the car of a fellow American the day before (he showed us pictures back at the hotel...he said it was the scariest moment of his life), but this mother elephant was too busy eating to care. Sorry for the butt shot, but I didn't think it was my place to tell her to turn around.
When we stopped for lunch at a little restaurant near the gate, we made a few monkey friends. The signs said not to feed the monkeys, but there was no need for the sign. The monkeys helped themselves. This monkey jumped onto several tables and took the food right off the plates of the diners. Another monkey grabbed a ketchup bottle, climbed a tree, and drank it like a water bottle.
After lunch, we saw many more animals along this beautiful lake.
Here are a few more photos. We got pretty close to all of them, but we never left the safety of our vehicle...
The safari was an all-day experience, and one of the highlights of my trip to South Africa. If you ever get a chance to check one out, I highly recommend it.
On Sunday, my Father Knows Nothing column will be about another great adventure in Africa...
African bathrooms.
