We travelled to South Africa overnight and then drove for some 3 hours to Rustenburg near Sun City. We had decided to try out a small B&B to get a feel for how the locals lived and picked the “Authentique French B&B” run by Alain and Francoise. (The latter was unfortunately ill and we did not meet her.) Alain was very entertaining and breakfast was a humorous 1.5 hour affair. There is something attractive about hearing jokes in English with a strong French accent.
Breakfast was in the dining room or out on the patio depending on the weather. Alain helped to organise a safari of Pilanesberg National Park. We undertook a self drive followed by a guided tour and BBQ held in the bush.
We saw some great wildlife. The zebra here was probably called Baloo as he had a great old scratch on this tree.
Meanwhile the McDonalds meal in the park (an Impala) was on constant lookout. This male was in a herd of males that stay together (more ears and eyes) while they sort out the pecking order and then join female groups.
One of the “Big five” (elephant, buffalo, lion and leopard being the others) was not in the least perturbed by any wildlife although he did appear a little agitated by our presence. Time to move on!
The animals swam past two by two….
Some of the birds were just spectacular. This is a Southern Red Bishop bird.
Wild pig were also in abundance. Interesting the way they go down on their front knees to eat. They walk like this grazing. 
Meanwhile in “middle of road” was a dung beetle. How he missed being run over escapes me but once the ball was made promptly moved to a safer place.
The evening brought a spectacular sunset with a number of giraffe grazing. They are very elegant even when they have bitten off more than a mouthful.
Our guide for the late afternoon tour was great and could spot wildlife even in the dark with a torch. He hopped out of the vehicle to collect a chameleon he saw amongst the leaves in a tree and then brought it round for us all to see.
We then moved onto Sun City for a couple of days staying at the Cabanas and rejoined Kate and Alan who had been to Kruger where they had had an awesome time. We had high tea at the Palace….
A subtle little establishment!
We also got in a couple of games of golf. This is a par 3 on the Palace course. The tee is in the background up the hill (which is pretty steep) and gives a spectacular view. It is called the Croc. hole…
Because you have to hit across a pit containing 6 crocs. There were quite a number of balls in the pit! Fortunately Alan and I both drove our balls safely across but were nonetheless relieved to see there was a drop zone for those less fortunate.
From Sun City we moved to Pretorius for one night. In the evening we went to Loftus park to watch the Brumbies take on the Bulls. What an experience. It started with finding a car park, as we drove down the road runners stepped in front of the car encouraging us to run over them or follow them to a car park. It was chaos but after a while we selected one likely looking athlete, drove to his space and handed over the essential fee of $8! I suspect they could not get insurance for this amount.The crowd was extremely vocal. Although most were very friendly there were one or two who would have been better off watching soccer. Loftus is huge and the match was very exciting for some 60 minutes as the Brumbies maintained a narrow lead. However, the last 10 minutes saw quite a swing and resulted in a loss of 50 to 32. Here Stirling is converting a penalty that was awarded within the first minute of the game.
We managed to negotiate our way safely out of the stadium and went to the Brumbies hotel where we briefly met Stephen Hoiles and Pat Mcabe (who scored a good try at the end of the game).
We had seats at the Southern end (space does not allow me to relate the fiasco that occurred with Force management and Ticketmaster in getting reserved seating tickets). 
After a great nights sleep we set of for adventure aboard the Rottnest Express. What a great spot the island is. Everywhere we looked there was magnificent views. We took a hop on hop off bus trip around the island and did force ourselves off for one hop and visited the lighthouse. 
The only disappointment was that in our trip we had not seen a Quokka so at the end of the meal one obligingly decided to hop past –we did not even have to get out of our seats.
We had planned a romantic meal watching the sun go down over the water which is not something we can experience in the East. Unfortunately being Valentines day weekend everyone had the same idea so we had a rather more noisy meal in a pub and then walked to the sea front to see the sunset.
