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South African wedding day 1: Heia
By nealejames | March 30, 2007
The Heia Safari Ranch in Muldersdrift is 45 minutes from Johannesburg’s airport, but what a difference those few miles make. When you fly into Heathrow, looking down, it’s never quite apparent where London ends and other towns start. They simply merge together. The first thing that struck me about Johannesburg is the city and sprawling townships seem to extend to a point then, as if someone has drawn a straight line over which you couldn’t even lay a single brick, the city stops and the bush begins. And so we arrived at the Heia. Built in the 70s, it is a rags to riches tale of a former £20 a week gold prospector, who fell in love with the country he had emigrated to, stayed and built an African empire. Heia now boasts it’s own game reserve, an hotel and conference centre, plus Zulu camp to maintain and promote traditions fast disappearing. The animals in this ranch have clearly never met the sights of an eager hunter since, excluding the Rhino for obvious reasons, they wander freely across the ranch inbetween sunbathing tourists, even stopping for a moment to drink from the swimming pool. I can’t imagine many places in the World where you would stand just four feet from a Zebra, with wide angle lens. Even the timid Impala stopped to wink and smile. “Catch my best side please, there’s a good fella.”
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