The Great Horn-Webber South Africa Experience 2007
Part 1
My blog is temporarily going to become almost a daily journal of what’s been happening with the family as they visit me here. The main aim is to keep the rest of the family in the UK informed so that they feel part of the adventure, Hello to you J,B(+1),G and G&G! If you support me here, you’re kind of part of the family too, so I hope you enjoy the stories as well…
Sunday
Mum and Dad arrived from an overnight flight from the UK. After a cold and wet week here last week (which I thankfully missed having been in milder Gauteng!), the hot weather was back with a vengeance and it was quite a shock to the system for them to step off a plane into blazing hot sunshine and mid 30s temperatures.
They are staying in Hillcrest in a very nice Guest House with 2 beautiful dogs, one of which is called Loopy! After a quick change into some cooler clothes, we headed for my house and they had a brief tour of the site before it got dark. All the kids were in dinner so it wasn’t easy to talk to them.
Good restaurant for dinner – Butcher Boys – think it’s a chain, at least in KZN. Nice place, but everything is cooked fresh so it’s a little bit of a wait for food. Dad had Kudu steak, quite tasty. He has been banned from shouting out ‘I’ve eaten you!’ as we go round Game Reserves.
Monday
Picked up hire car and L&R from airport. Felt like paparazzi as we took photos of plane landing, them walking from plane to terminal, emerging from arrivals hall etc… Just before they came out, a guy in orange robes (can’t remember the religion, Buddhist maybe?) came through arrivals and was greeted by similarly dressed men who placed a garland of flowers around his neck. It was too late for me to assemble a similar garland of biltong (dried meat loved by South Africans worldwide) to place around L’s neck…
As I showed them all around site later on, the kids were a bit more interactive. One little boy told my Dad he looked like Father Christmas (because of his beard!), and another little treasure told my Mum that she had hair ‘like a Gogo’ (because her hair is blonde?!)
All the Zulus here are very eager and pleased to meet my family. It’s quite amusing watching them. I keep being accosted by people who’ve heard that my family are around but have not been introduced yet. Tomorrow could be a busy day…
Tuesday
Time is flying by already… Today I took the family for a visit to the local Spar shopping centre to get a couple of things. It’s a centre full of black Africans and is lively, loud and a real experience… Then I drove them to visit a couple of the preschools, through the valleys of KwaXimba and Swayimane. L and R took some footage on video camera which will be made into a DVD at some point soon, we watched it this evening, I think the comedy parts might not make it through, but there were several. We encountered all the traditional sights of driving through the valley – crazy combi driving, large cows and goats blocking the road, everyone waving as we passed; but sadly no monkeys were out today. It was a bit weird for me driving so slowly through the valley, normally I’m on a mission to get somewhere and don’t stop to admire the views. We couldn’t stop for long, but we did get some good views of the amazing valleys.
After lunch in Pietermaritzberg, we headed to Tala Game Reserve. After a comment yesterday from Dad that all he’d seen in the way of wildlife so far was dogs, cats, Sunday the sheep, my rooster and Tubbles (special cat), I decided it might be fun to do a ‘trial run’ around a smaller game reserve, in preparation for the big ones up near St Lucia at the weekend.
And we weren’t disappointed. Arriving just after 4pm it was cooler and time for the animals to come out. My car isn’t suitable for driving down near the water, so we had to admire hippos from a distance, but with our plethora of binoculars and long lens cameras, it wasn’t a problem. A little farther along the way I stopped to point out what turned out to be a rather boring bird in a tree to the right, but immediately on our left there were 2 warthogs having a set-to. Having pushed each other around, and then pushed dirt at each other, they both turned around and peacefully started munching the grass. Must have been males…
I commented that to make a good day we just needed to glimpse Warthogs, Giraffe and Rhino (no predators (lions, cheetahs, leopards) or ‘tramplers’ (elephants) allowed in Tala, it’s a peaceful reserve), and shortly afterwards we came across 6 giraffe right next to the road having a snack of some trees. 4 adult and 2 young. They were outstanding and to be so close to them was incredible. Giraffes are so docile that that wasn’t a problem, but we were eager not to scare them. They are such amazing creatures, so graceful and yet each seems to have an expressive face as they stare straight at you taking picture after picture of them chewing away at some leaves. I wonder if God was chuckling as he designed them. Did He know how much pleasure and amazement these beautiful creatures would bring to the inhabitants of an (almost clean) White Toyota Camry on a sunny Autumn afternoon in 2007?
Two down, only the Rhinos to go. Cleverly, I thought to ask a ranger where the rhinos were hiding and we headed down that way. We nearly lost the track by following another guided tour but spotted our horn-ed friends over on another hill. In the process of getting close to 4 chunky rhinos, we pootled past herds of zebra, wildebeest, Eland, buffalo and several other deer, not to mention several Ostriches and Herons. But the light was fading fast and so the cameras had to be put away and all too soon it was time to go. But for a first attempt at Game viewing, it was excellent and everyone is happy to have been able to get so close…
Highlight of the day: Without a doubt, the giraffe experience. Until you’ve been up close to one of them, you can’t appreciate how amazing these magnificent creatures are, and our car was surrounded by them! Awesome!
All of the pictures are on cameras requiring a special device to get them onto my computer, so they will follow tomorrow. Friends back home had better book out several days for the post-holiday photos on return from here, something tells me that there are going to be a lot!
