Pilanesberg National Park

After another full conference day, it was theday for our full day excursion! We were all pretty excited, and happy to hop on the bus at 9am. The drive was quite long, and we stopped at a small village that hosted some craft markets. Overall, pretty much a tourist trap. The first part was terrible, with people bugging you so much that you lost all fun and ran away. Across the street, there was another market, and that one was much nicer: Friendly people, not trying to drag you into their shops. And it owkred for them - we bought a few things. I bought a "safari shirt" ;-)

credit card facilities...

A mural on one of the pillars - beautiful!

Those amazing yacaranda trees were all over South Africa.
It doesn't get much more beautiful!

Kaija & me

After a lunch sto at that village, we went on to Pilanesberg National Park. Trust me, after the very long drive, we were all very excited getting to the park! We had to wait outside the visitor centre for a while, while Peet organised our tour...

Sylvia

Antje

And finally, it was time to board our safari truck, and head into the park! And right at the gate, we saw a bunch of Impalas - such beauties!

Impalas

Black Rhinos

Kudus

Warthog (clearly male....;-)

Zebra

Brindled Gnu (Wildebeest)

Well, and we weren't on tour for that long, when our driver got us to a spot where a lioness was lying under some bushes, feasting on a carcass of a Gnu (Wildebeest)...

After a while, she got up and walked past us, crossed the road, and....

...met two other lionesses! She then led them back across the road to the carcass.

Rest assured, we all were amazed by having been able to see these beautiful cats so close by!

Elephants

Giraffe

We then got to a place where you were allowed to leave the vehicle and walk to a hide, overlooking a lake. We saw a rhino and a few other animals on the far side of the lake, and many beautiful birds all over the place...

Red-winged Starling

White-faced Whistling Duck

Southern Masked Weaver

Great Egret

Egyptian Goose

Greater Stripes Swallows

We saw a few more animals, including a 2-months old baby elephant and a rhino. But the light was fading, and it was too dark to take some reasonable photos. Since I will post photos of these animals in the Krüger National Park blog at better quality, I won't post them here...

Our tour ended at a beautiful place, where we were treated to a braai - a classical South African feast!

Neil, Kaija, Alice, Liezel

Back at the visitor centre, where we changed back to our regular bus, there were loads of these toads in the swimming pool, making lots of noise...

And that was the end of our experience in and around Potch! It was a great and successful conference. It was also wonderful to see all those guys again (we are like a family now...), and to meet some new people. We actually agreed to host the next ICNT conference in Auckland next year. It will be tough for us to match (or beat ;-) such a great three days... Thanks to Peet, Melville, Susan, Liezel, and their entire team for having put on such a great event!!!

Neil, Alice and myself left for Cape Town next morning...