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| Welcome to South Africa, Jill! |
When I asked my niece Jill which animal she most wanted to see when she arrived in South Africa, she said "the giraffe." Giraffes are easy. They are plentiful in SA and they do not have any natural predators to speak of. Even the lion will not take on the giraffe's potential fatal kick in most circumstances.
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| Jill on horseback with a giraffe in the Waterberg |
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| Giraffes @ Ant's Nest |
And we saw giraffes almost immediately as we set out on our first
horseback safari at Ant's Nest. A tower of giraffes - that's what a group of giraffes is called! - even came out to say goodbye to Jill on the last ride before we left.
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| Jill rode an elephant at the Elephant Sanctuary! |
Even though we saw plenty of her requested giraffe, I still wanted Jill to see as many other African animals as possible, both in
the wild and in sanctuaries. And we did. We saw rhinos, zebras,
warthogs, vervet monkeys, baboons, blesbok, waterbuck, impala,
gemsbok, eland, sable, nyala, wildebeest, lilac-breasted rollers and yellow hornbills
in the Waterberg; lemurs at the Monkey Sanctuary and African ellies at
the Elephant Sanctuary in
Hartbeespoort; dassies
on Table Mountain and more dassies along with plenty of penguins at the Boulders
penguin colony in Simonstown; common and bottlenose dolphins, humpback
whales, dusky sharks, sardines, and loggerhead turtles in the Indian
Ocean off Port St. John, as well as cape cormorants, subarctic skuas, cape gannets,
southern giant petrols, and albatrosses in the sky overhead. We even saw the very rare cape parrots in Port St. Johns. Good spotting, Jill!
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| Walking with lions! |
At Ukutula
we walked with lions and interacted with baby cheetahs, (Asian) tigers, hyenas, lion cubs and orphaned caracals. And we saw crocodiles basking on the riverbank.
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| Giraffes @ Ukutula |
We saw more impala, nyala and wildebeest on our lion walk at Ukutula and their resident giraffes even came out to say hello to Jill too!
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| HRC with Lou & Serge |
Of course I couldn't let Jill leave without seeing South Africa's finest dachshunds, Lou & Serge. We had dinner with them at the HRC and Jill had their pictures taken with Nelson Mandela's statue in Mandela Square.
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| HBD Nelson & Jill! |
Hyde Park Corner joined the Eiffel Tower in Paris, The Empire State Building in New
York and other landmarks in Mumbai, Dubai, Warsaw, Chile, Milan and
Munich, in support of Breast
Cancer Awareness Month and to help focus attention on the importance of
breast health and early detection. (Interesting choice. I am not sure if I've ever thought of Hyde Park Corner Shopping Centre as a landmark per se. I would have thought one of the iconic towers and buildings dotting the skylines of Sandton and Johannesburg would be more on par with the Empire State Building but TIA.)
