Hello and I hope this post finds you well! I have finally gotten around to sorting through some of my photos taken from my trip to Africa earlier this month. My trip began with a few days in Johannesburg. One of these days we ventured out on a tour to Pilanesberg National Park for a safari, which is about a 2 hour drive away from Johannesburg.
The closest I had ever come to a safari, prior to this day was Disney’s Animal Kingdom’s Kilimanjaro Safari ride or the drive through safari and Six Flags Great Adventure. Needless to say I was quite excited for this experience.
The safari / game drive experience was absolutely spectacular! There is really no other way to explain how it feels to see all the animals just roaming around and doing whatever they please. Above you can see elephants as well as herds of impalas and zebras in the distance. This photo was taken at the beginning of the safari and it truly felt unreal to look into the distance and see this view.
Above is a group of wildebeests that were hanging out on the side of one of the pathways. I found it kind of funny how some of the guides almost brushed moments like this over as I guess it is quite common to see. As you may be able to imagine, I was quite blown away. It felt so unreal to be able to take these photos with little to no zoom.
It’s impossible not to mention how amazing just driving around and observing the scenery was. As I touched on this briefly in the beginning, this Safari was the second day of our trip so I was quite in awe just driving around and taking in these vast, natural landscapes. Then again, I don’t think I could ever get sick of these landscapes. Even if we didn’t see any animals this day it is notable to say that it still would have been an incredible experience simply due to the scenery alone.
The biggest difference between a real life safari rather than something like the Kilimanjaro Safari Ride is instead of seeing all the animals in less than a 20 minute ride, the whole drive (at least for this tour) was about 3 hours long. So you do go portions of time where you do not see anything and then all the sudden someone in your vehicle or your guide will spot an animal. As you can see in the photo above, we were very luck to spot this rhino hiding behind the tree. Fortunately the rhino came out for us to get a really lovely look at.
Just after our rhino spotting we passed an area that was full of super close up zebras, warthogs, wildebeests, and impalas. I loved seeing these Zebras up close and found it really interesting to just see the rest of the animals hanging out in the back.
Towards the end of our safari we were SO blessed to be able to spot this elephant that was making its way down to the water. It just so happened that its pathway was right next to our pathway, so it came extremely close to our vehicle. The phrase ‘gentle giant’ holds itself true. It was quite magical to just watch this creature out in the open. Once again, it is crazy to thing some of these photos didn’t require any zoom at all. In fact we had to be extremely quiet in the vehicle as the elephant began to come closer and closer.
Finally the elephant proceeded onwards to the the water to join what appeared herd of elephants in the distance. 
One of the last animals we saw for the day was this gorgeous giraffe pictured in the photograph below. Oddly enough, one of the first animals we saw during the day was a giraffe but it was much further away. As we were heading back to our starting point I remember thinking to myself, wow would I love to see another giraffe, then about 10 minutes later our guide spotted this guy, who was initially hiding out behind a tree. Lucky for us he decided to step out a bit so we could get an absolutely incredible look.
As you can probably tell, it is really hard to explain and put into words how amazing this experience was. I hope you enjoyed this tiny little taste of what it felt like to be on this wonderful safari. If there are any questions on how I found this tour, how we booked the trip or anything that may come to mind please do not hesitate to leave it in the comments below or shoot me a message and I will be sure to get back to you. Have a beautiful day! 🙂
Hannah On the Go 