Another Great Weekend: Flying over Cape Town, Petting a Giraffe and My First Braai

I Had A Great Weekend Flying over Cape Town, Petting a Giraffe and My First 'Braai'

Well, this awesome day started rather early…We got up at half past 6 am – by the way, I haven’t got up that early since I left school – then got ready and drove to the airfield, because we wanted to be there by 8am. As you can probably imagine, we didn’t make it there on time, because this is Africa. Okay, actually because we still needed to get fuel, money, coffee and cookies and whatever. Yes, cookies for breakfast. Well, back to the original story line: We arrived there half an hour later.

Although I already had like 4 layers of clothes on, I still got equipped with a flight suit (is that what it is called?), and in the end I was really glad for it, because I was still freezing my *** off up there. Aside from that I also got a fancy headset, a helmet and luckily more or less fitting gloves. After a few instructions we got out onto the runway and…took off.

I somehow thought it would feel different or a bit frightening to fly with such a little open thing, but god it was awesome! In the beginning I was a bit reluctant to get my camera out, because 1. it was windy and very high and that was my only camera, and 2. the cloves were rather huge and I didn’t quite trust my ability to grasp my camera properly without letting it slip through my fingers. But at some point I thought:
"This is so amazing - I have to take pictures of that, no matter what." And luckily I still have my camera today.

All in all, we were up in the air for round about an hour – which of course felt like only 10 minutes…Why does time always fly by so quickly when we enjoy things?

After that, I spent another hour at the airfield, waiting for Hannes to come back, chatting to other people there, that were also waiting for something: either their own flight or their husbands or friends coming back from their flight. All people there were pretty friendly.

At some point in the afternoon, Hannes also went flying and all the others, including me, had a little Braai at the airfield, watching the planes coming in and leaving again and enjoying the sun, because it turned out to be a lovely day. Only later I discovered that this lovely day got me an ugly sunburn all over my face.

Anyway, after spending almost all of the morning and the afternoon at the airfield, Hannes and I eventually drove off to the place where he promised me I could pet a giraffe. Very creatively the place was called “Giraffe House”.
After paying the entrance fee and buying some food for the giraffe (and the other animals there) we headed straight to the giraffe’s enclosure, which by the way proved to me more difficult than anticipated, because the days before it was rather rainy, which resulted in the pathways being either unusable or very, very slippery. Luckily, we managed to get to the giraffe without falling down on our butts, but please don’t ask me how we managed, because I myself have no idea.

Unfortunately, the giraffe, which was really cute, seemed not to be in the mood to be petted, because no matter how much food or grass I offered her, it was just not convincing enough for her to lower her head so far that I could touch her more than once. Hannes on the other hand was luckier, because he is definitely the taller one of us both. But hey, the visitors after us didn’t have more luck and that’s what consoled me a bit, not because I am spiteful, but because I didn’t want to accept that it was only me that the giraffe didn’t like.

At some point we continued our way through the Giraffe House, during which Hannes explained me a lot about the plants growing there and of course all the animals that we would see; very interesting and informative. The reason for him knowing all this is that he is field guide at his own private guided safari company WanaSafiri. He also made a book about one of his trips together with one of his Swiss customers, which is called 1 Guide & 1 Guest. The interesting thing about this is that it is bilingual, so to say: English and German. - But that is not what we want to talk about here.

As the stubborn giraffe refused to eat the food we bought for her – I suppose she was female, because men aren’t so complicated – we in the end fed it to the goats that were so eager to get it that they almost climbed over the fence.

After we have seen all animals and after I have taken a few pictures, we finally left, got into the car and drove off to Hannes’ friends’ place, that I already told you earlier about, where I had my first Braai (if we don’t count the one at the airfield) and we all had a wonderful evening.

I would say that that was once again a very nice day and a good way to spend my day off. Soon again hopefully.

Written by Nina Dammann

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