Pilanesberg Game Drive

The Pilanesberg is the safari that fits into a Johannesburg stay. It lies north-west of the city, close enough for a day, and it is a proper Big Five park rather than a zoo with a gate: elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard, with giraffe, zebra, hippo and a great many antelope around them.

The park sits inside the worn-down rings of an ancient volcano, and the shape is still there. Low hills run round in circles, a dam near the middle draws animals down to drink, and the roads wind between them. The animals were brought back to it from the late 1970s, and they have had decades to make it theirs. It is smaller and more open than the Kruger, which works in your favour on a single day.

The day starts early because the animals do. You leave the city in the half-dark, and the first hours in the park are the best of it, when anything that hunted in the night may still be on the move and the light is low and gold on the grass. By midday most animals are lying in the shade, and so, sensibly, are you.

The drive is in a closed vehicle with a professional guide, which is not the same as the open trucks of a safari lodge. You watch through the windows, the guide reads the tracks and the roads and keeps in touch with what others have seen, and the day moves at the pace of the sightings. Nothing is promised, but a full day in a park this size gives you fair odds.

Ask about the Little Five while you are at it: the elephant shrew, the ant lion, the rhino beetle, the buffalo weaver and the leopard tortoise. Guides enjoy finding them, and children love the joke.

If you have two or three nights rather than one day, go to the Kruger: it is the longer, deeper version of the same thing. If you have one day, this is it.

Good to know

• Pick-up is very early. Sleep near the start point the night before.
• Highveld mornings are cold, especially in winter, and afternoons are hot. Dress in layers.
• Binoculars each, and a camera with a zoom. The windows are your view.
• The animals keep their own schedule. Nothing can be promised on the day.
• Park entry and gate times are set by the park. We confirm yours in writing.