Hitting up Hartbeespoort

So you're stuck for a few days in Johannesburg, and lets be honest there's not much going for it in the city and it has now been voted the Worlds most unfriendly city. Well the answer to all your problems is...Go to Hartbeespoort! About an hours drive from Johannesburg, the town is based around a dam and has the perfect one day itinerary, home to four main activities- An elephant sanctuary, the bush baby and monkeys sanctuary, market/small shopping stop and a cable car up a mountain to look over the Hartbeespoort Dam.

Aprox an hours drive from JoBurg Airport, situated just left of Pretoria

The Elephant Sanctuary

http://www.elephantsanctuary.co.za/hartiesabout.htm

The sanctuary has 5 elephants, as you need approximately 1000 hectares per elephant! I chose the elephant interaction program. It starts with an elephant keeper showing you around the elephant, talking about the anatomy of the animal, followed by feeding an elephant (like a vacuum cleaner!) and then walking trunk-in-hand with the huuuuuuuge animal. Until I had done all of this, I never realised just how big an elephant was. It should just be noted too that all the elephants there are rescued and have NOT been taken from the wild.

I admit I was a bit weary of the place first, after going on safari first and seeing hundreds of elephants in the wild but once I saw how they were treated and the sanctuary owners' passion for the elephants, my opinion soon changed, it is a fantastic place with such good intentions! Once in a lifetime stuff!

ANNNND, elephants eat 250kg of food a day! Extreme!

BOOKING ESSENTIAL.

Elephant Kiss

Post elephant kiss

Bush Baby and Monkey Sanctuary

 http://www.monkeysanctuary.co.za/

Only tours are available here but thats not an issue! It's a wooden walkway through the forest home to hundreds of different breeds of monkeys and lemurs that live freely in the forest with no fences to separate them. There's also two rope bridges that are AWESOME suspended between two mountain gorges. Just beware, the monkeys know how to pickpocket!! My friend lost her glasses to a Capuchin!

Night in the Museum anyone?!

Aerial Cableway

http://www.hartiescableway.co.za/

If you love a good view (like myself, as I go on about them enough), this is a great way to see what Hartbeespoort is all about, the Dam. It's also has some great eateries on top of the mountain and at the cableway ground station. On the top there's also a few trails too.

Hartbeespoort Dam

 I'd definitely recommend a day in Hartbeespoort if you're 'stuck' in Johannesburg for a day or two, good places to stay will offer a reputable taxi firm who will transport you to the places for the day. It is also possible to buy all three activities in a combined ticket from the Elephant Sanctuary website.