Rugby and Pilanesberg National Park

Outside the big stadium.  This is the stadium where SA won the World Cup against the All Blacks.
(Invictus)

Both teams are lined up for their national anthems.  We sang what we could remember of the Marsellaise.  And then the stadium roared with the SA anthem.  I don't know what it is called.  The tune was really pretty, but I couldn't understand the words until the last phrase.  Someone told me later that each verse is a different language representing all the differing people of SA.  This is what it looks like.  I'm thinking the first 2 verses are either one or two different African languages.  Verse 3 is Africaans and 4 English.  What was amazing is the whole audience knew ALL the verses.  It was pretty cool.

Nkosi sikelel' Afrika

Maluphakanyisw' uphondo lwayo,

Yizwa imithandazo yethu,

Nkosi sikelela, thina lusapho lwayo.

Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso,

O fedise dintwa le matshwenyeho,

O se boloke, O se boloke setjhaba sa heso,

Setjhaba sa South Afrika - South Afrika.

Uit die blou van onse hemel,

Uit die diepte van ons see,

Oor ons ewige gebergtes,

Waar die kranse antwoord gee,

Sounds the call to come together,

And united we shall stand,

Let us live and strive for freedom,

In South Africa our land.

The scrum!  It was a fun experience.

I'll just post some pictures from our trip to Pilanesberg.  We left bright and early (5:30AM) and drove about 2 1/2 hours to the park.  In all we saw: elephants, rhino, giraffe, zebra, kudu, impala, wildebeest, warthogs, hippo, and the dead carcass of a wildebeest.  We waited around to see if the big cat that took it down would return, but we weren't that patient and it was lunch time for humans too.  The elephants, rhino and hippos were either real....or rocks.  They were very far away, and as you can tell from these pictures, well camouflaged ....but they moved so we counted them as animals.  It was a fun day.

This girl (I call her Ellie Mae) was close to the gift shop.  They had a salt lick and she couldn't get enough.  She attached her mouth on that thing and sucked on it.  It looked like she was nursing.  And then she would stand up and lick her lips!

We saw  zebras walking down a hill coming towards the road we were on.  They crossed right in front of us and walked past a herd of wildebeest.

We spotted these two.  They were closer to the road than all the other ones we saw.    They really put on a show for us.  They were playing and bumping each other.

This is a kudu.  You can tell by those distinctive horns and his face markings.

We turned a corner and almost missed these guys.  They are well hidden.  

This baby zebra was lying down when we came upon them. We didn't know if it was dead.  It wasn't!  There were a bunch of impalas nearby too.  One of them had only one horn.  (A chorus of purple people eater came from all the oldies in the car.)