The Pilanesberg (mis)adventures - part I (2013)

I recently spent three weeks in South Africa. This was my third visit and every time I've been there my friends have taken me to Pilanesberg National Park for a daylong game drive.  The park is located in the North West province of South Africa, about 170 kilometers (105 miles) north of Pretoria.

Every visit there has been made more interesting by some sort of unexpected (mis)adventure. This post is about my first visit to the park.

2013

My first visit to South Africa was in January of 2013. On January 23rd it was time for my first visit to Pilanesberg.  We left the house before sunrise to get to there early.  All of us were pretty sleepy and we skipped coffee, breakfast and all that essential stuff. We just wanted to get on the road and our plan was to stop for coffee and rusks (a South African kind of biscuit) at the gate when we got to Pilanesberg.  

We were all more than ready for coffee when we arrived there and opened the trunk of the car to get everything we needed out.  Only to realize that the picnic basket had been left behind at the house.  In Pretoria. A two hour drive away.  Oops!  Thankfully we had brought all the food and drinks, including the thermoses with much needed coffee, with us.  We just didn't have plates, cups, cutlery, cooking utensils etc. 

Some impromptu souvenir shopping (a set of wooden salad servers with zebra stripes on the handles), two balloon sticks we found in the car and a plastic spoon we found on the ground by the water tap at the picnic site saved the day. We used slices of bread as plates for the scrambled eggs we had for lunch and shared the three mugs on the thermoses between the five adults.  And it was fine. We had a great day.

The cooking utensils: souvenir salad servers, two balloon sticks found in the car and a plastic spoon we found by the water tap at the picnic site (we washed it thoroughly before we used it).

In the days leading up to the trip to Pilanesberg my friends were telling me that the animal we'd see lots of was elephants.  The claimed I'd be sick of them by the end of the day (I can't fathom being sick of ellies).  We didn't see a single elephant that day. Not one. We saw plenty of other animals; zebra, giraffe, white rhino, hippo, impala, blue wildebeest, waterbuck... We even saw a lion. But no elephants. Apparently they were hiding from the scary Norwegian visitor or something like that.

It was a lovely day, despite the lack of picnic basket and elephants. I wowed to come back next year to (fingers crossed) see elephants. (And hopefully eat my lunch from a plastic plate. ;-))

Zebra and Impala by Mankwe dam

Red bishop (the bird) in the grass by Mankwe dam.