If you’ve never been to Intaka Island in Century City, it’s well worth the visit to this award winning 16 hectare wetland and bird sanctuary.
Intaka, which means bird in xhosa, is home to 177 indigenous fynbos species and 120 bird species.
This weekend Intaka hosted a unique Easter egg hunt for families. I love the idea of getting into nature and the beauty that Intaka offers so we booked Hamish a space.
We arrived about 25 minutes early and Hamish explored the tiny train model inside, looked at the animal pictures on the wall and spotted the ducks on the canal.
I signed us in and like many of the early parents we waited in various outside spaces as the little hall grew full of parents and their children.
Keeping Hamish busy we stayed outside until someone called us, or at least I assumed someone would call us.
Eventually at 10.55am one of the parents we had met earlier, mentioned that it looked like we needed to line up and sign in for a second time to collect our maps.
I was shocked. Not one of the 4 staff members had mentioned a word. No announcement was made and we now found ourselves almost last in a queue from being second to arrive.
Brent kept a busy, excited Hamish entertained and I waited in the line.
To add insult to injury, we had pre-booked and paid almost 2 weeks in advance and I was held up by the woman in front of me who hadn’t even paid for a ticket yet. So, what exactly was the point of pre-booked registering?
Our Easter egg hunt was not starting off very well at all.
We finally received our map.
A lovely laminated map marked similar to a treasure map and Hamish was super excited to find the treasure.
And so we started our walk following the path.
I love the educational concept to this hunt as each child needed to collect a sticker from each of 5 nests at the marked points on the map, and place it in the matching nest .
The encouragement of family bonding as they worked to find the hidden treasures and the ability of getting people moving in nature are brilliant.
The gorgeous scenery and wild bird life more than made up for the bad start to our day and Hamish loved every minute of running around.
We even stopped at the lookout to admire a few birds on the water .
Once all 5 stickers had been found and matched we headed back to the hall where Hamish exchanged his map for a hamper of eggs.
The hunt was certainly beautiful, unique and educational. The chocolates were worth the R40 we paid for the hunt and it was a day well spent.
I do however feel this would have been much better with a bit more communication to the members of the public that supported this hunt.
