We had just entered Pilanesberg National Park. On the main road we stopped the car to look at zebras on a hill far away. The zebras were quite a distance, but we had a clear line of sight on them. In excitement I hear “There is a giraffe right there!”

No more than twenty-five meters from the car was this giraffe by itself at the watering hole. We stayed in our spot for a few minutes until it walked out of sight.

This is our first game drive and it was a self drive. What Americans refer to as ‘safari’, South Africans refer as ‘game drives.’ And the beauty of being on a self drive is that as long as we stayed on the road and in the car, we could look at the animals for as long as we wanted. I had never seen any of the majestic creatures of Africa in the wild and within the first twenty minutes in the park I had seen an elephant, a hippo, zebras, and too many more to name.

And don’t worry we got much closer to animals throughout the three days we spent at Pilanesberg National Park.