South Africa - Day 7 - Adrenalin and Adventure

We knew that we had a busy day ahead today so we got up nice and early. Rob however had been out taking his time lapse pictures until 3:30am and I felt a little guilty waking him a 7:30.

Once dressed we went to the buffet breakfast, they had the usual favourites although it wasn't until my second course that I found where the bacon was hiding, close call! I managed to properly stuff myself as only buffets allow which May have been an error as the first activity of the day was a quad biking safari. 

We met up with our guide and boarded an army truck style vehicle which would take us the short journey to the game reserve. SA has taken a leaf out of the UK's books here and we had to sign waivers just for boarding the bus!

Rio, Pandaman and Rob kitted up and ready to quad.

Once at the reserve we had our briefing, signed more waivers and headed out to the quad bikes. They had a couple of off-road motorbikes out there too but they wouldn't let me taken one of those instead. Eh guy talked us through the rules of the quad bike; no donuts, no slowing down and speeding up, no weaving, no overtaking, etc. PM started to cry a little but the guy said at the end to treat it like you do your own car which was a contradiction to everything he'd said earlier.

There were two groups of us, our group of four and another group which included some kids, I think there were five of them. The bikes were in a line and they'd already chosen the five at the back so I chose the one just infront of them, I wanted mid pack as they'd be a guide at the front and one at the rear, so no chance they could see me misbehaving in the middle.

A quick stop while we waited for everyone else to catch up

We set off and my blindspot plan worked immediately as I managed to get it sideways on every turn. I had Rio in front, with Rob just in front of him armed with a Go Pro and then Pandaman immediately behind the guide. 

We had a bunch of fun and the terrain was quite rough, having kids in the group kept the speed down unfortunately but we managed to make the most of it. I accidentally kept ramming Rio everytime we stopped, it must have been the brakes :). PM also got told off by the guide for sliding around too much, this 'advice' was largely ignored.

We saw some animals too, kudu (BIG antelopes), zebra and a giraffe. We also went up some pretty steep rocky slopes which tested the quads out properly. It was on one of these slopes where Rob stalled so he dropped to the back of the pack, later when we all bunched up again I waved him into a gap I'd left and then bunched forward putting him behind me, I wanted some of that Go Pro footage :)

Soon it was time to bring them home and as soon as we saw the end in sight people started ramming each other, going so sideways the Duke boys would have been jealous and from some people, even the odd donut. 

With the helmets off we all looked like a bunch of pandas from the dirt!

Back at the hotel we got changed and headed to the waterpark, it's a big complex with some crazy slides and a legendary wave pool. Of course we started with the biggest baddest slide, a vertical drop from the tallest point in the park. I went first and Rob was on point with his camera... It's safe to say that you get some serious speed on that thing, and my advice to any one who gives it a try is to keep your legs crossed!

Various levels of panic as we tackled the vertical slide

We hit a few more slides, Rio got stuck in one and had to paddle her way down and even got overtaken somehow by a youngster. When we'd tried all the slides we hit the wave pool despite the sub zero temperatures.

The wave pool isn't like any other that I've seen before, instead of pushing out constant waves, a horn is sounded and then pressure is gradually built up and it releases one giant tsunami. I tried to remain standing for the first one but got completely knocked off my feet, so opted to surf the rest.

After a full afternoon in the waterpark we got changed for our final sorted a proper game drive out in the wild. It started at 4pm which is a good time to see the animals although our guide warned us not to expect too much.

Careful where you stick that

Not long in we saw a kudu feeding and some gnu. Further in and the amount of wildlife increased with zebras, springboks and wildebeest being surprisingly common. Soon, however we saw some rhinos, our first of the big five. We were the only truck to have spotted it and we tracked them as they slowly walked next to the road. Another tour bus from another company came past and asked what we were looking at and our guide told them it was just kudu so they drove on. Genius.

It's like he'd never seen a bus full of tourists before

Eventually everyone else cottoned on so we moved on and very shortly saw some elephant, that's number two of the five. Next to them were giraffe and just down the road was a baby jackal who came right up to the truck.

All of these photos were taken with my camera which
has no real zoom, so it shows how close everything was.

The sun was setting now and we were losing hope of seeing a big cat just as we saw a couple of cars parked ahead. One of the rangers had told them that 40m into the grass was a male lion lying in the grass, so we stopped and waited. Soon a dozen trucks were waiting and we could see its head popping up now and then. Our driver expertly positioned our truck for he best view and as darkness came the lion eventually rose.

All the trucks fired up their engines and drove next to him as he strolled around like only the king of the jungle could. He was about 4m from our truck on my side, unfortunately my camera phone isn't the best at night so I opted for some video footage instead (which obviously doesn't do it justice).

After a few hundred meters he lay down again and the truck lights showed why, he'd been stalking a pack of springboks who were now only about 50m away from him. We thought we'd leave him to his lunch as he'd never have caught anything with the noise of the trucks and the lights and took the opportunity to head back to the hotel.

Not bad for my first game drive, 3/5 of the big five seen, the other two being cheetahs (which are invisible) and water buffalo which are ultra rare, so I was more than happy with that, especially with the close encounter with the lion.

Following the game drive, we had some food and took the 2 hour drive back to Joburg, we were all knackered so sleep was welcome.

The next day is just me getting home, in fact I'm writing this part way into my 20 hour flight back to Manchester, so that's it for this adventure.

Thanks to Pandaman, Rio and Rob for letting me stay, showing me around and the general good company, and of course thanks for reading!

Stay tuned as Mark will return in June for another epic biking trip in Europe.