South Africa, 17.-21.10.2011

I admit! I didn't care too much about my blog in the past few months, and the more time passes, the bigger the effort to roll up everything that happened in between...

So yes, even though this entry will be appearing in May 2012 (inshallah), the topic is the oldest one in the backlog of 7 months: South Africa.

How did I get there? I happen to be one of the fortunate people who work for an international company which still affords the luxury of having trainings combined with the touch of an incentive.

The first two days consisted of presentations, meetings and long working days and the evenings we usually spent close to the hotel, as Johannesburg is not considered a safe city and we had been advised not to leave the hotel without our tour guides. I can not judge the actual situation, as I - for once in my life - followed the advice, but we had a bus tour through SOWETO (the SOuth WEstern TOwnship, a district of Johannesburg), which was making me feel both, scared, and wondering how people can actually live there. The houses were basically bigger "shoe-boxes" - very simple accommodations, with tin-roofs covered with stones:

It really is a poor district. In the same area there is also a museum located: the Apartheid museum. It draws your attention to the subject fromthe very beginning: your ticket is assigned randomly to be "blankes" (white) or "nie-blankes" (non-white) and you have to take the entrance according to your ticket. I entered as "nie-blank".

Inside the museum it was not allowed to take pictures, but I captured a glimpse at the very beginning:

Most of my colleagues rushed through the museum and some even ran the risk of being kicked out as they were taking photos inside the museum, but I let them all pass and then concentrated on the topic. I found the exhibition well-prepared, and especially the part on the black children, servants and workers in the mines touched my heart and made me swallow my tears.

After the museum we drove on through the country-side until we arrived at Pilanesberg, a national park. On the way we stopped for souvenirs, small hand-craft items made of wood or stone. I got an elephant - a present of a colleague and friend of mine.

Upon arrival at Pilanesberg we just checked in and dropped our luggage at the little villas, as we had to return to the reception to have our first game drive. And we were rewarded with our first sighting: a huge herd of elephants crossing our path right after the entrance.

The first representative of the "Big Five" (elephant, lion, leopard, rhinoceros and buffalo):

And the rest was to follow:

right in front of our car....

The youngster of the herd even tried to challenge our car :-)

The next sighting was a herd of hippos, which are very shy and therefore not often to be found outside the water.

At the lake we could also find a multitude of colourful birds (left alone the trillion of mosquitos and other insects). One of them was the Cape Weaver, a beautiful yellow bird which builds ball-like nests attached to the twigs of bushes (see upper left corner of below picture).

One of my favourite shots shows an African Darter.

And a general impression of the landscape during sunset:

The next day started early: at 5:00 we were supposed to gather at the reception area to have a quick coffee and some cookies to kick off the day and to have our first early-morning game drive. Since the days get quite hot, the animals usually hide in the shade during the day, and move around only during early morning or late afternoon.

The learning of the first early-morning drive was: you can never put enough clothes on! It was freeeeeeeezing and most of us - being used to a really hot climate - were trying to wrap in everything available, even if it was only canvas made of plastic:

But in return we got rewarded with another member of the "Big Five": rhinos :-) - don't let them get angry at you. We had been told that especially the black rhinos can become very aggressive and then you don't stand a chance as they are very fast runners even though they look rather chubby and slow. We were also able to spot a leopard from the very distance, but the buffalos were hiding successfully.

The zebras, which we could not spot the other day were mingled with a herd of giraffes, as the giraffes can see well, whereas zebras hear well - or the other way around, I can not remember!

A shot of two of the most common animals in the park: impalas. They had been everywhere, but with everything that is available almost "unlimited", it was not appreciated very much by my camera and this is the best shot I could find...

Another very common animal of the park is the wildebeest. It is not very pretty, but I still liked it. It usually migrates in comparably huge herds.

During the night-drive we also discovered a group of another member of the "Big Five": lions. We first watched them using red light as they would not bother as much as with white light.

Of course, the white light enabled us to take better pictures - at least that was the case with my small pocket-camera.

They are lazing around just like any domestic cat :-)

... stretching is the same...

and sharpening the "tools" is also in scope.

One evening we had a bush-dinner in the national park and if the voices, the drums and the dancing hadn't scared off all wild animals, the rangers certainly would have done that for us. It was weird, to know all these wild animals are all around us and we can just not see them.

Another day we found a jackal sitting on the track - very quiet, but it neither seemed really scared, nor sick, and the next day it was gone.

In between the game drives we spent our time in the garden of the Lodge where we had been staying. The "boys" were playing soccer, the "girls" were chatting and/or tanning, some of us were even working and some were "monkeying around":

The same afternoon an elephant appeared in our "garden of eden" and people were queuing to get some nice shots done:

After all, I think I also owe you some pictures of the lovely accommodation we were staying in:

The wonderful villa I shared with one of my favorite colleagues, had a nice bathtub as well as a shower outdoors! I admit it was a weird feeling to go outside for a shower at night, but I totally recommend the experience :-)