Pilanesberg National Park — Fat Chicken Meal

Honeymoon - Day 15

After having breakfast at The Kingdom Resort, we headed to Pilanesberg National Park. Originally we thought we would first need to enter Sun City (with entrance fee) before we could get to the park. Good that we asked the staff at the resort, and she said we could entered via the Kwa Manritane gate. Turned out it's quite close and easy to find. We just followed the signs to Kwa Manritane.

Map of the Pilanesberg National Park. The colour pins indicated sightings of different wildlife.

We're given a map after paying the entrance fees. Before we started, we discussed the route we would take. Our goal was to see the most part of this park within the shortest time (sometimes Asian style of travel could be the best approach 😆).

It's great to do self drive. Our first self-drive safari! I really like how we could stop whenever we want to, and go at the speed we prefer.

The landscape here in Pilanesberg national park is beautiful. It's definitely much better than I expected. Our plan had been Kruger national park, but it's became clear that it's not realistic to get there...Simply couldn't fit it into our schedule (even with Asian travel style). This was the alternative that Mr. B found. We only have one day and that's a wonderful choice he's made for us.

After driving for half an hour, I became a bit concerned if we would see anything at all...I didn't forget that most of the wildlife had been spotted either by the guides or by Mr. B (in Kenya and Tanzania). I'd often focused on resting my eyes until someone spotted something. 😂 So, now, when this responsibility fell on my shoulders, I...was wondering if we would get out of the park seeing only amazing landscape. Well, not bad, but still...

Finally, like 15 minutes later, we saw some zebras. Hem hem, I mean, Mr. B saw some zebras. Okay, at least there's something Haha!

While I was looking between the map and the scenery outside, Mr. B said there's something on the hill.

At first we thought they were elephants...But upon using our cameras to "see", Mr. B proudly pointed out that they were...RHINOS!!! Seriously?!?!

Yes!!! Yay!!! Finally!!! We didn't see any in Masai Mara or Serengeti, and only saw one that's just too far to be seen in Ngorongoro. We didn't think we would see it here! Collected the last of Big 5! 😉

Since we were not in a super hurry, we stopped and watched them while crazily taking pictures. Honestly, there were quite far away...

But then, as we waited for 15 minutes or so, they were moving slowly but surely towards us!

Being able to see and take some pictures of rhinos made our day! What a pleasant surprise! Mr. B said it was actually good that we didn't really see any rhinos previously. That way we're able to see something new as we progress.

We watched them for around half an hour, and we moved on as they stopped to rest. The excitement remained in our car during the rest of our self-drive safari!

Then, we saw more rhinos! But since they're sleeping, we continued our journey.

I really like zebras. The zebras here are different from those in Kenya and Tanzania. Apart from black and white, they have some brownish stripes as well.

And then, you know what? The best is yet to come!!!

We ran into 2 rhinos right next to us by the road!!! We were so so so close to them.

Mr. B was very contented and satisfied with what we've seen today. I'm happy too! 😊

At about 4pm, we were driving towards the exit and was blocked by a giraffe. It moved away after 10 minutes and we were on our way back to Johannesburg!