Safari and Sun(burn)

Firstly, apologies for not posting over the weekend - we were away from Jo'burg and had no internet.

On Saturday morning, we visited Lesedi Cultural Village which was designed to display the customs and traditions of the major South African tribes.  Apart from the feeling that it was all a little fake, this was a fairly interesting experience.  We got to try pronouncing some words from isiXhosa, which is made especially difficult due to the presence of 'clicks' in the language, for example Xhosa is pronounced as [kǁʰɔsɑ].  Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, amongst others have Xhosa heritage.  In another village we were offered salted caterpillars to try, which I politely refused due to the fact that most of our group were eating them with looks of mild disgust on their faces!  We also got treated to a show highlighting through song their cultures and histories.  There was also a call for a volunteer to take part in a club fight against a Zulu warrior, unfortunately for him, the volunteer was a member of LARPS from Warwick so was actually quite good at that sort of thing.

Traditional Tribal Hut

On Saturday evening and on Sunday morning we went on two safaris - a self-drive on the Saturday, and a guided one at 7am on the Sunday.  Between the two were saw 4 of the Big Five, but to be fair, the park ranger said that there were only two of the one we missed (cheetahs) in the entire park!  Got some fairly decent photos on both days with my zoom lens and will probably end up e-mailing (or whatever) the best ones to people who want them.  Just to say to anyone considering going on a safari, it is absolutely incredible, although to see the animals when they are most active, be prepared to be freezing cold!

Elephant

Rhino

Hippo

Lion

Zebra

Giraffe

On Sunday afternoon we went to Sun City, a water park located near where we went on safari, it would have been perfect except that the water was too cold to properly enjoy, so I just spent a good few hours indulging in idleness on a sunny artificial beach.  Unfortunately, I appeared to have missed some spots when applying the sun cream as I've got blotches of sunburn which make me look like a miscoloured giraffe! 

That's all for now - got to do some lesson planning as we are planning on going to watch South Africa vs. Burkina Faso on Wednesday evening (the most expensive tickets are R100 - about 10 quid!)