Tuesday 5th

Fulfilled one of my life's ambitions today. More of that later...

We had a leisurely breakfast at the guest house in the company of a party of jovial French-speaking Africans, then drove to the gate to Pilanesburg Park. Bought day tickets and started ticking off new birds while we were still in the visitor centre - there was a red winged starling nesting in the thatched roof inside. We drove up the road a km or so and took a side road - unsurfaced but easy enough to drive if you go dead slow and watch out for potholes. Thinking, "Where are all the animals?" until we reached a dam holding back a small lagoon, and there was a water buck right beside the road, take as anything. Then driving across the dam some logs in the water started splashing about and snorting, and we realised they were hippos! Five of them!!! And we hadn't even reached the end of the dam before a pair of giraffes loomed out of the scrub before us. We followed the side road round in a loop back to the main track through the park, and soon we were looking at herds of zebras and wildebeest. Took another side road called the Hippo Loop, and sure enough there were four hippos out of the water, grazing beside the road on the bank of a large lake. Plenty of water birds along the shore too - spoonbill, Egyptian geese. A herd of twenty wildebeest a bit further along with suckling babies. Then when we'd stopped to photograph some bee-eaters a herd of adult and baby zebras wandered up and surrounded the car. Almost close enough to touch. This is such a wonderful place. Beautiful thorn bush covered hills and vast grasslands under a bright blue sky. We lunched at a cafe in the heart of the park on a terrace overlooking a water hole, watching wildebeest and a family of warthogs. After lunch came my big moment...we'd gone down a side track towards a bird hide on the lake, and scanning the far lake shore Robbie noticed one of the wildebeest was rather large. Blow me, if it wasn't a rhino!!! A life-time first for me, an animal I've always been fascinated with. We walked along a boardwalk to the bird hide which was situated out in the lake, and there was a colony of weaver birds in the acacia trees alongside it. Also nesting in the reeds were southern red bishop birds - indescribably cute, but I'll try: the males are orangey red and black balls of fluff that puff themselves up and chatter aggressively at anything that comes near their nests. The fly around all puffed up like flying pom-poms. The females are small brown and dull looking. I set up my scope in the hide for good views of the rhino. There were pied kingfishers perching on dead branches right outside the hide windows. Walking back along the boardwalk we saw a big monitor lizard lieing along a branch right at eye level in the acacia tree where the weaver bird nests were. Not surprising they were all so agitated!

We exited the park via a different gate, seeing quite a few more giraffes along the way, and a large herd of impala. Took a wrong turning and ended up at the back gate of Sun City, South Africa's tacky answer to Las Vegas. It looks like a Disney World castle on top of a ridge. Turned around and found our way to the Kwa Maritine hotel where we wanted to eat. Very expensive looking resort hotel just inside the park boundary but they had a huge 3 course buffet for only about £12 per head. Before eating we sat in their hide for a full hour. It's like an underground bunker beside a water hole, and you reach it through a very long underground concrete tunnel. When we entered there at dusk, there was a rhino far off just disappearing into the scrub, but we waited until it was fully dark and they'd turned on spotlights around the water hole, and all we saw was a rabbit, a bat, a moth and a blacksmith lapwing. The buffet was huge and delicious. Dead tired again.