No, I am not talking about those excuses for shoes that seem to have taken South Africa by storm. I mean the real deal, green, low slung, long nosed, sharp teethed and extremely aggressive remnants of pre-historic times. I mean these guys are dangerous.
What am I on about you may ask? Well I recently took the family on an extended long weekend up to The Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, proclaimed South Africa's first World Heritage Site in 1999. To be more precise I was in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, recently renamed which means "wonder" or "miracle" in isiZulu. It is a place you have to visit to understand the beauty.
We had two excursions into the nature reserves, one that ended badly thanks to the obnoxious owner of Kabanga Tours (I think that's what they are called) who are licenced to guard the gates to the iSimangaliso Wetland Park. Thank you Steve...for nothing! The Second excursion was into the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park which ended with us about five metres from an elephant grazing on some trees. While he seemed pretty chilled and uninterested in us, I did decide after about 8-10 minutes of watching this beautiful beast, that discretion was the better part of valour and proceeded to drive off in my seemingly small Renault Scenic. By the way my car was giving trouble, definitely not for the first time in its life.
In approximately two hours we had seen a lion's buffet of buck, literally hundreds of impala, waterbuck, kudu...but no lion, three giraffes, maybe 12 zebras and a foal, hippos, warthogs, wildebeest (poor man's Buffalo), a rhino and don't forget the dung beetles rolling balls of dung across the road. I thought they only did that for Discovery Channel! While the rhino was impressive, he was quite far from us, you could still appreciate its size, the zebra foal and mom were right next to our car and it was awesome to see. My highlight though was definitely the elephant as we saw him only a few kilometres from the exit and I thought I wouldn't see what I believe is one of the most beautiful creatures to grace our planet. It definitely made my month.
We also visited the crocodile park (pools) and that is where my short story actually begins. The kids loved this place. There were baby crocs, adolescent crocs, adult crocs and even a croc old age home for three of their older citizens. My oldest daughter loves Snow White and believe it or not there is a dwarf crocodile that gave birth to 7 dwarf baby crocs and she was therefore named Snow White.
While I know that we as South Africans have a great sense of humour, in fact we pride ourselves on it, I was really amused by the warning signs at this crocodile park. As South Africans we can never be the most politically correct nation on the planet and who would want to be? I mean the Brits are so tied up with it that they have almost completely hogtied themselves.
Anyway, as you walk through this croc park, which is basically wheelchair friendly, there are a series of up and downhills along the way. There has to be a whole number of ways to warn people in wheelchairs of the steep downhills and to be careful other than the sign above...if we were P.C. that is. I don't believe a South African wheelchair bound person would take offence to it but what about our European and American visitors? Is this sign a red flag to a lawsuit frenzy or will it be taken as a funny yet very clear warning? I guess only time will tell.
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