A Walk in the Park

Adventures for local and international visitors in and around South Africa’s 14 national parks

A Walk in the Park by Roxanne Reid

When award-winning journalist Roxanne Reid introduces her book, A Walk in the Park, she writes: “I’m an Average Joe, someone just like you; a person you can identify with. If there’s anything I can do, you can do it too. Like me, you need at least to have a sense of fun and adventure, but you don’t have to be tough or ultra-fit; you don’t need superhuman physical or mental staying power.”

A Walk in the Park takes the reader on a romp in and around 14 national parks from the Kalahari to the Limpopo, from Cape Town to Mpumalanga and from the Free State to the Karoo. As TV trekker Denis Beckett wrote in the foreword, “This is a delicious book. It evokes things we love about the country around us. It conjures up places that soothe the soul.” A Walk in the Park certainly informs and entertains the average armchair traveler who wants to live vicariously. That’s why they’ll find answers to some intriguing questions such as:

• why your partner is potentially more dangerous than a black mamba

• what Patricia Lewis, James Small and Ozzie Osbourne’s bizarre kids have in common

• why hippos are vegetarians and vultures need a spin doctor

• how to prove the Free State isn’t flat

• why a really tiny little fish is actually the Big Mob Boss of the deep,

and perhaps most intriguingly

• why a barnacle has a penis that’s 20 times longer than its body.

The book also provides inspiration and practical ideas for people who want to get up out of their armchairs and do things for themselves. Roxanne has included contact details for all the activities mentioned (these will be updated on the book’s website – www.awalkinthepark.co.za). There are nearly 300 activities from which to choose, plenty to wrap a holiday around. There are ideas about where to catch up on some cultural history, and places to enjoy good food or a relaxing sundowner. Of course there are some more energetic adventures like paragliding or skydiving, with all sorts of stuff in between, like a horse trail, a wilderness hike among lions, elephants and creepy crawlies, a Tarzan-and-Jane swing among the treetops, and a 4×4 trail
through the Karoo mountains.

There’s even a walk in the Kalahari desert with a San tracker who has a gazillion-gigabyte memory of fascinating stuff. That tracker is just one of the characters readers will meet in the book. There’s also Ramolefe Moatshe, who Roxanne dubbed the Leopard Man, because when he was almost 60 years old, he took on a seriously angry leopard with his bare hands – and won. He was still around 25 years later to sit in the shade of a tree and tell his amazing story.

Another character readers will meet is the loony Kowie Pienaar, who used to farm near Beaufort West in the Karoo. Roxanne writes, “He was a tough old nut, but he was sick and tired of having to take a three-day horseback ride from the main farm to check on his stock up in the mountains, so he and four farm labourers put their backs into building the road known today as Pienaar’s Pass. Or at least the labourers put their backs into it. A bit of an old tightwad, Oom Kowie had no intention of wasting money on long fuses for his dynamite. Instead, he set very short ones and then raced hell for leather backwards down the precipitous pass in his bakkie to get to safety before they blew up.”

Roxanne says, “Meeting people like these, people from all walks of life, is an essential part of the joy of travelling, because I can
learn something from every one of them. And that’s the difference between a traveller (which is what I try to be) and a tourist. A traveller moves among real people in their own milieu and learns from them, soaking up their wisdom and philosophy, their way of being in the world. A tourist simply hops from one tourist highpoint to another, skimming across the surface, cramming in quantity rather than quality, and comes away with his soul and imagination unchanged, untouched by the wonder of a life lived differently.”

And that’s Roxanne’s wish for everyone who reads and uses this book; that they’ll come away with their imagination touched by wonder and with a huge sense of the possibilities for fun and adventure in our beautiful country.

About the author

Roxanne Reid is an award-winning freelance writer and editor. She completed her BA Honours in English at the University of the Witwatersrand, her Honours in History through Unisa and short courses in journalism and creative writing at Stellenbosch and Cape Town universities. She was the editor of a food industry journal for a decade and won more than a dozen SPA Pica Awards for journalism and editing. Then her real life began and for the last ten years she has worked as a freelance book editor, health and travel writer, writing about stunning places like Namibia, Kalahari and Botswana. She is happiest in the middle of nowhere, beyond reach of cell phones, meeting the locals, trying something she’s never done before, or simply watching the grass grow.

Published by Aardvark Press A Walk in the Park comprises 160 pages including 16 pages of colour. It includes orientation maps and Fast Facts to help visitors ascertain what facilities are available at the various camps.

The book is available from booksellers throughout South Africa and Aardvark Press’s secure e-commerce website (www.aardvarkpress.co.za) at ZAR 170.00 including VAT. (ISBN: 978-1-920154-07-3). A Walk in the Park is supported by the website: www.awalkinthepark.co.za (additional photos, updated contact details for activities, etc).

ISSUED BY Tracey Whitelaw, Aardvark Press (Publisher) Tel: 021 782 4615; tracey@aardvarkpress.co.za