Pingu in South Africa

All that travelling wasn’t good for Pingvina’s heart condition and I heard from my grandparents that she started to complain about my travels, „Pingu this...“ and „Pingu that...“, I was glad I wasn’t there to hear her insults. In the end I received a warm welcome, she was relieved that none of my wings were missing and I impressed her a lot with my adventure stories. She was proud of me.

Little did she know what adventures were waiting for me in South Africa! Neither did I. There were many moments of great danger when I thought of her waiting for me on the Pingu throne or in the Pingu King size bed.

First I liked it a lot, I just fitted in. We were invited to yummy barbecues (they call them braai), they are the real barbie masters and they threw so much on it I couldn’t keep up with smelling all that stuff. On top of that they drink huge amounts of beer, because of this their bellies are of similar shape as mine. Just my sort of country.

My parents had to work off all that food so we went trekking up some crazy mountains called Amphitheatre and Drakensberg, I was constantly busy avoiding their dangerous sweat drops. They put me on the edge of a 1000m deep cliff face, right next to the second highest waterfall on earth, my heart was racing I can tell you. But that’s the sort of adventure I can cope with. My mummy would have climbed down the cliff to get me, I know that.

On the way down a little crocodile jumped on my back, we later found out it was actually a baby chameleon who obviously wanted my protection from other wild animals. It kept me free from flies for a while (I seem to attract them too, don’t know why, protection from chameleons?), but soon we had to peel its sticky feet off my back because I realised it might poo on me.

The next adventure would have scared the poo out of every penguin or Pingu, my parents went diving again. I was nearly lost forever in a hut with big dangerous insects (I can still hear the humming of the giant mosquitoes), somewhere in Africa without my Pingvina, I nearly lost my parents! Diving is stupid enough, this time they were diving to see big dangerous sharks! Others are clever enough to dive in a safe cage but not my parents. After 2 hours of shivering under the blanket - ehm actually I was training my muscles to get ready for intruders - they finally came back, all wet with disgusting salt water and with big bruises on their legs. Some weird jelly fish creature tried to eat them alive. I knew it was crazy to go but they didn’t listen. Served them right. Underwater is no environment for humans or penguins.

I didn’t know that it could be just as dangerous on land. I thought we’d go to a big zoo but we suddenly saw all these crazy monsters running around freely: big stinky buffaloes, herds of angry looking wildebeests, silly giraffes with absurdly long legs and necks (must be a backstep of evolution, you don’t need either when you’re intelligent enough), a leopard sneaked through the greenery plotting some attack on me, short-sighted rhinoceros were no danger to humans but they sniffed me out, we even saw lions eating an antilope, so glad they weren’t hungry anymore! Not enough, we also camped overnight, if only Pingvina would have been there with me. Right behind the house we had hippos with huge mouths that can fit at least 150 Pingus, of course I didn’t get close to the water but at night they came out to look for food. I continued my training programme.