I travelled to South Africa at the end of October to attend meetings with some of the country’s sports and entertainment broadcasters during the inaugural Adweek Africa event in Johannesburg. Adweek was ultimately cancelled due to recent xenophobia related violence (cached here) but the meetings that had been arranged, where I was representing YouTube as a Partner Technology Manager, still took place.

I arrived in Johannesburg on Thursday, 31st October, and stayed in the city for 7 nights. This time was mostly spent working but in the evenings I enjoyed checking out Johannesburg’s upscale restaurants, such as sister restaurants Marble and Saint, and visiting the Aparteid Museum, an impactful and somewhat overwhelming experience, on Sunday.

On Thursday 7th November, a week after arriving, I hired a car and my colleague and I took some time to explore some of the areas around Johannesburg.

Another colleague, who had lived in Johannesburg previously, recommended that we visit a Lion and Cheetah Sanctuary in Pretoria where we could see baby lion and cheetah cubs. As it turned out there were no cubs and I learned, soon after arriving, about the deeper moral issues of breeding or aquiring cubs to attract tourists - a topic which recent show, Tiger King (2020), has shed more light on. However seeing and interacting with the adult animals - which I understand were rescues and could not be let back into the wild - was an amazing experience.

A close-up shot, with very shallow depth of field, of Bolt the cheetah

This cheetah’s name is Bolt. We got on well.

A medium shot of Bolt the cheetah as he star

The cheetahs, and other animals that were there, were kept in fairly large enclosures presumably to protect the nearby game.

A shot of 4 wild giraffes grazing on foliage nearby a watering hole

The giraffes were extremely skittish, presumably more-so because of their calf, so it wasn’t possible to get much closer to these animals. Every time I moved they would look up and stare at me for some time before cautiously going back to grazing on the nearby foliage.

The lions, of which there was 1 male and 2 females, were kept in a seperate enclosure to the cheetahs. All of them were asleep.

Seeing them here was the start of my discovering just how much lions sleep - 23 hours a day!

A wide shot of a lion sleeping under the shade of a tree

The Lion King (of the Lion and Cheetah Sanctuary).

A medium shot of a lioness mid yawn

The two lioness’ were both quite - or very - overweight. It turned out that this was related to the contraception they had been prescribed.

I need to admit I found this quite funny. I don’t think I’d ever considered the concept of medicinal contraceptives for animals and it raised many questions. Are there different versions of “the pill” available? Does it affect their mood?

After we left the sanctuary I dropped my colleague at the airport in time for his flight to Cape Town and then began to drive north towards Pilanesberg National Park.

I had been strongly advised against doing this journey at night. Many years ago, our other colleague had hit an animal - which had wandered into the road - when making the return journey to Johannesburg at night. He was lucky to have made it back to the city safely.

By the time I was on route I was running late. With less than an hour until dusk and a 2 hour journey ahead of me this was going to be a night time drive through rural areas of the Gauteng and North West provinces of South Africa.

A map showing the driving route between the Lanseria International Airport and Pilanesberg National Park

When I arrived at Bakabung Bush Lodge I was greeted by two guards at a gatehouse securing the entrance. I don’t remember whether they were armed.

There was a stark difference once I was inside.

Nice cars and houses lined roads like a well-off suburb. It was at this point that I realised that these lodges which exist within the park were essentially “rich person compounds”.

After pulling up near the lodge reception and turning off the engine I breathed a huge sigh of relief. After nearly 2 hours of driving in the dark towards a destination I had never been to - and which I didn’t know would be particularly safe - it was good to know I had a place to sleep for the night.

I got up at around 4:30am the next morning, had some breakfast at the restaurant and then went outside to join the game drive at 5:30am.

A shot of black rhino taken from the game drive vehicle

Of the Big 5, we crossed paths with lions and black rhinos (shown above). However the 22-seater bus that we were on was quite prohibitive to taking good photos (and my 35mm lens, which is quite wide on a full frame camera, didn’t help either).

A small herd of 3 antelope that were heading in the opposite direction to our game drive

A small herd of antelope that we passed. One of the few nice images I was able to capture from the ‘confines’ of the vehicle.

A distant elephant makes it's way across the reserve

As I was leaving Bakubung Bush Lodge that afternoon, a solitary elephant was making it’s way across the park. In that moment I had a strong sense of connection with the importance of wildlife reserves, like Pilanesberg National Park, and the extreme vulnerability of the animals that were being protected by them.

A view of the landscape from the vistor centre of the Cradle of Humankind in Maropeng

As I made my way back to Lanseria Airport, from where I was catching a flight over to Cape Town, I stopped at the the Cradle of Humankind in Maropeng. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to visit the Sterkfontein Caves or other areas of the heritage site due to time contraints but instead comprimised with a photo of the view from the visitor center.

As it turned out my flight to Cape Town was delayed, and the knock-on consequences of this were pretty disastrous for my time in Cape Town, but the few days I spent in Johannesburg and surrounding areas of the Gauteng and North West provinces were great!