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

Subscribe in a reader

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The leaves feel like rain.

Image
          The leaves feel like rain outside of the window.      I made a mistake and realised that, probably, I changed the word fell for feel for a reason. May be it is me, may be we all, women, the same. We feel first, then we act. How we feel would influence our decisions.       If I don’t FEEL IT , nothing good will come out of it, take it or leave it. You can call it six sense, you can call it intuition, you can call it whatever, but if my inner barometer not happy, then I will procrastinate, become very slow. There are many reasons for that.       Previous experience? Yes, definitely. Was once there, broke and lonely. I did try to do something by inspiration only. Things don’t work like that, unfortunately. Don’t want to go there again. I decided for myself- will do anything to be independent, but has to play safe.      I am not alone, neither of us, and that’s not ...
Read more

Bond, James Bond, new movie “Spectre”, Guinness records , Casino Royale.

Image
Bond, James Bond, new movie “Spectre”, Guinness records and much more. “Casino Royale” “Spectre” is the name of new movie in "Bondiana" franchise. The premiere in London was a total success with 3 royals attending and attracted a lot of media attention. Daniel Craig was magnificent together with his co-stars Monica Bellucci and Lea Seydoux. Now "Bondiana" spreads across 53 years with 24 movies and 6 actors playing Bond. Bond became older, even Bond girls became older too. The franchise is known to achieve 50 world’s Guinness records in stunts department, music , and popularity. Past Bondiana movies were remarkable for the longest speedboat jump in the film (Live and Let Die), the highest bungee jump from the structure (Golden Eye), the most cannon rolls in a car (Casino Royale) and much more. Bond theme song from “Live and Let Die” by Sir Paul McCartney and Wings received Oscar nomination for the best original song in a movie. It was the only one, so ...
Read more

Street Art in Johannesburg (new street art I discovered on weekends)

Image
Subscribe in a reader Street Art in Johannesburg started to become more and more popular,probably because city council realised it attracts tourists. You can do a tour or two on street art in a particular area.Most popular tours are the street art in Maboneng and Newclaire. Street art was not even interesting to people something like 25 years ago.Only the works of Banksy in UK,who made street art the expression of underground culture with political flavour, made street art interesting to other people and generated a lots of other graffiti writers and artists, who either copied Banksy or developed their own style.Banksy subsequently became known and recognised for his work in 2010 and his name was on a list of 100 most influential people by The Time Magazine. I became inspired by this topic after I read blog of Omo and Eulanda from their blog/site heydipyourtoesin.com. Hey, guys, this one is for you! It took me long time to accomplish, but eventually it was like I have to make this ...
Read more