Gold reef City, Johannesburg

We try to do a road trip somewhere close at least once a month…not this month!

This month we visited Gold reef City.

Part of Gold reef City is aimed at the children in the form of the theme park and some at the parents in the form of the casino.

We however like to walk and see, explore and try out everything that is available in the theme park area!

We saw an old steam engine, beautifully shiny and black.

Adventurer 4 explored another big engine and Adventurer 5 explored from his car.

We took a ride in the tram

and were met by so many tame peacocks! {did you know the female is called a peahen?}

We love animals and kept looking and looking until we found the entrance to the Animal Farmyard.

These were the beautiful artwork against the walls of our passage into the farmyard.

Some more artwork…

And some more…

And finally the farmyard. We appreciated this beautiful man-made waterfall.

Capuchin Monkeys from the South American Rain Forests were a winner.

But the feathered friends an even greater attraction.

The walls were quite low and it took lots of resistance not to jump in and pat!

This turkey was a bonus to our trip. We read an interesting article the previous week about domesticated turkeys loosing their distinct colours. Ta-da!!!

In Afrikaans we have a song ‘eentjies, eentjies, stap in ‘n ry’ which is roughly translated as ‘ducklings, ducklings, strolling in a row’! and well in domesticated nature that is apparently how it is done!

We thought this enclosure is just beautiful and we enjoyed the friendly staff feeding the animals.

These ponies were another winner.

And the donkey came to greet.

This pig were snoring so loud! and did not even lift his head when we called!

We could pat these guys,

And dodged the spitting lamas!

Did you see the hens sharing the food with the lamas’?

And tortoises. Our little guy is about 1/4 of these ones and sadly with this post not with us anymore!

And another peacock. They were all over the place and blessed us a few times with spread out tail feathers.

Finally we visited the theme park!

Adventurer 5 hugged every possible character he could find!

And some history jazzed up a bit. Johannesburg’s history is littered with gold mining and I just love how history is intertwined with the fun and beauty of this theme park.