Would you like to try different type of holidays? Try Horse safari!

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Never knew that I am actually staying in a wonderful place. Not so far away from me is Hartbeespoort Dam and everything what comes with this place: endless possibilities to explore South African nature and wild life. Surprisingly I did not read too much about it in blogs. People just don’t do horse riding anymore?

And it never occurred to me I can’t ride on a horse, I never did. Never in my life.

That thought, however, came later when I saw my horse and was invited to climb on it. Well, good for me, there were no other people, and the program in Groot Verlange Driving Academy was able to foresee the situation like that.

Yes, they cater for complete beginners. Interesting enough, when I googled places for horse riding I found Groot Verlange in Hartbeespoort and other place La WiiDA in Hennopsriver Valley, also not far from Hartbeespoort Dam area. Both cater for beginners. Both have game reserve adjacent to their stables.

I started from Groot Verlange and was not disappointed. Individual attention, very good guidance, support- that was all that I needed. Riding on horses has advantage over driving a car- animals are not so afraid of horses and allow us to come closer. My guide Precious took me inside the game reserve. I am not the first time on photo-safari, but this time it was different. It was just two of us: Precious and me, on horses, and we were able to see more animals. Giraffe were so busy, they barely noticed us. I was able to do a lots of pictures. Kudu, Honeybadger, Zebra, Warthog, Impala, Blesbuck, Waterbuck- everyone saw them, they are usual animals in game reserve. Zebras don’t like to pose usually, however I was able to make couple of shots. Not so easy for beginner to try to balance on a saddle and shoot with my Sony camera. Last, but not least we came to see blue wildebeasts. One of them was not so friendly, he was hiding himself behind the bushes and tried to come closer to us and my horse did not like that. One hour passed like five minutes. Next day I was not able to walk!

Next week I booked myself to another horse riding safari at La WiiDa. This time it was a bit easier. However, my horse Bushman, did not want to obey me until our guide Howard gave me little tree bruch …and it became easier.

We were a group of 7 people. Here, at La WiiDA, also the rider not necessarily must have experience in riding, but we needed to go up and down on horses, we must be able to speed up a little bit. We saw amazing animals. We were able to come very closely to a zebra and actually touch her. The workers in La WiiDA were able to tame this zebra. Usually zebras don’t allow to touch themselves and bite even zookeepers.

Howard told us a lot of interesting facts about animals. There are two types of zebras- the plain, Burchell Zebra and Mountain Zebra. Zebra’s stripes are like fingerprints to humans; they are unique to the animal. We saw both types of zebras in game reserve. Of course, it was a lot of game-kudus, impalas. Blue wildebeasts stayed separately. Among them it was one white wildebeest, very rare. Howard told us his price is about one or two million Rands. After sometime going up on a hill we met a giraffe and were riding together with it. Then short break, some rest and we went back.

When I googled again about horse riding in South Africa my attention caught African Big Five Horse Safari in Hoedspruit, near Kruger National Park. Travelers will be able to see very closely elephants, cheetah, rhinos and even lions, but that is definitely not for beginners. And the price is different. May be some other time. Check my account on 500px Svitlana Avramenko

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