It is not only the big five in the Pilanesberg that can enthral and engage your attention completely. On a tour to the park on the 3rd of January a visitor was overheard at the bird hide at Mankwe lake saying: “This place is fantastic. We have seen more here in a morning than in a week in the Etosha”.
Some things, big and small, beautiful and not so good looking, that caught our eye were:
Here we also saw the longest water monitor (leguane) I have ever seen, large terrapins basking on a log, a baby crocodile, and a kingfisher dive bombing a small fish in the water.
A baby zebra curiously came up and smelt our vehicles front tyre. It might have been the smell of the elephant pooh we drove over earlier that caught his interest.
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A family of warthogs, dad mom and six brothers and sisters. The only pig that avoids forests and lives on the savannah, it grazes grass. The litters are usually 3 to 4 piglets, so this was an exceptionally large litter.
One is always in awe of the majestic size of a giraffe. Look how the bouwildebees (gnu) is dwarfed by this female giraffe!
Springbok used to roam the drier western parts of South Africa in large herds with migrations larger than the Serengeti, hence the Afrikaans name ‘rebuke’. Pilanesberg is a transition zone between the western savannah and the bushveld. This makes it the only park in South Africa where both the springbok and the impala occur naturally.
