Well, actually no tigers, and no bears (who needs bears anyway, if you’re from Canada) and frankly, only one lion. But still! Wild Animals! Safari!

We celebrated a first free weekend by going to Pilanesberg National Park, a couple of hours drive from Johannesburg (add an hour for sitting on a road, waiting for a light to change somewhere miles away and let us all through). The negatives of the National Park were that you’re stuck renting a hotel in the park, which was extortionate and very bad value for money, but the positives are the animals, and they win hands down.

A lot of people on our four hour journey were getting anxious because, right until the end, we didn’t see any lions or elephants, but I was completely charmed by this guy we happened to meet:

By a pair of baboons running through high grass a bit too fast to film them.
By the sight of wildebeest and zebras and the interesting knowledge that it is impossible to ride a zebra because they have weak spines and their kidneys are too close to the surface: it would kill them eventually. There go a fair few plot-lines from some of my childhood short stories then!

There’s something about seeing these famous and alien animals in the flesh that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. They’re so cute, even the ugly ugly warthog, and they are bigger or smaller or more leathery than you could ever imagine from pictures. It’s like seeing a really famous painting for the first time.

My favourite of all was the giraffe, who we rocketed past in search of lions. Her head, perfectly level with our 4×4 buggy, stared mildly out of a bush at us, blinking her exquisitely long eyelashes. We screeched to a halt, and she walked calmly across the road, and disappeared into the evening, her hips and her neck swinging in unison.