Happy holidays everyone! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas celebration with your loved ones. It’s been really nice having the past few days to relax and catch up on things after being in South Africa for the last two weeks.

I wanted to share a few more photos with you, mainly from our trip out to Sun City, which is about two hours outside of Pretoria/Johannesburg. The place is filled with a safari, man-made water park, casino, games, segway tours, hot air balloon rides, and even a crocodile zoo! Nancy and I got up extra early two Mondays ago (12/14) and caught a taxi ride (shoutout to Trevor our driver and Meline who organized the whole thing for us) out to Sun City.

We were a bit nervous driving there as the weather got really bad, with both rain and thunderstorms hitting us. But things cleared up when we started the safari tour around 8:30AM. Although the day was a bit cloudy and I wished more animals came out, we were glad to just be out and about enjoying the wildlife of South Africa :). We also stopped by the water park (wished I had brought some swimming trunks!). Below are a few videos and photos of the safari/crocodile tours:

South Africa Trip Part 4 – 12/14/09 from Henry Chen Photography on Vimeo.

South Africa Trip Part 4 – 12/14/09 from Henry Chen Photography on Vimeo.

South Africa Trip Part 4 – 12/14/09 from Henry Chen Photography on Vimeo.

We got to see wilderbeests, zeebras, impalas, giraffes, hippos, elephants, rhinos, and even a lion. Unfortunately, most were at a distant, so far that my 70-200mm on a 5DM2 was just not good enough to get a close-up shot of the animals :(. Next time, I’m bringing a teleconverter and a cropped sensor body. Excuse to go back to South Africa and visit the best safari in the country :).

A view of Sun City from afar:

Here’s the entrance to the Valley of the Waves, aka a mini Raging Waters:

And lastly, the crocodile zoo. I forgot the actual name of it (as you might be able to tell from the third video above, I was too distracted being nervous to listen to our tour guide):

There were a few other animals in the zoo. Fortunately, we didn’t run across any snakes. I felt so lucky to go through two weeks without seeing a single one. As some of you might know, I’m TERRIFIED of snakes. More on that later…

And here are a few more photos of our good times in Pretoria/Johannesburg/Sun City from Nancy’s point-and-shoot camera, starting with Vasti and Pieter. They took us to a South African lounge/restaurant called Moyo. The vibe was amazing there, it should definitely be a place you check out if you ever visit SA. We even got our faces painted!

Here’s our safari tour guide named Solly; we loved his insight on the animals but more so his subtle jokes and sarcasm. We learned a few South African terms and gestures, including a “secret” handshake with the locals…ayoba!!!

We also had a chance to try out Wimpy, a fun fast food joint across the major cities in SA. Their morning breakfast burrito was the you know what!

You can’t go two weeks in SA without being hyped up for FIFA World Cup 2010. There were quite a few constructions going on in preparation for the big event next May/June. Oh yeah, we also had a lovely picnic the day before our safari trip in Pretoria.

Lastly, check back again soon for photo and video of the place we stayed at while in Pretoria. Our time in SA can sorta be divided into two parts: Pretoria/Johannesburg and Cape Town/Stellenbosch. This concludes the first part of the trip. But I can’t wait to share with you part two, which consists of the three weddings I second shot with Christine Meintjes. Bye for now!