Fly Away Weekend to Zebula Golf Estate

Fly Away Weekend to Zebula Golf Estate and Spa 14–16 August’09 — (By Debbie from Johannesburg): Twenty years from now you will be more dis­ap­poin­ted by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did — so explore, dream, dis­cover — and this is exactly what NAC Training does at least once a year by arran­ging heart-soaring heli­copter excur­sions for all their past and present stu­dents, friends, fam­il­ies and colleagues ...

The most recent of these being a week­end at Zebula Golf Estate & Spa – the only 5 star venue of its kind, set in the bushveld of the Limpopo Province, 1.5 hours north of Pretoria by road or 1 hour fly­ing time for the 11 heli­copters who took to the skies from Rand Airport.  Remembering that it’s not just the jour­ney that is import­ant but how you get there that makes your trip some­thing to remem­ber for the rest of your life, we lif­ted off at 10h00 for what was to be an unfor­get­table adventure.

Zebula is a prime train­ing area for moun­tain fly­ing due to its close prox­im­ity to the Waterberg Mountains.  It’s a spe­cial place that offers much to most from golf to cheetah’s to spa treat­ments and gour­met meals.  The chee­tah run is a high­light as Taran and Luka amaze you dur­ing their per­form­ance doing 0-100km in just 3 seconds, which is faster than a Ferrari!!

Some of the other activ­it­ies include horse back safaris, clay tar­get shoot­ing, quad bik­ing, fish­ing, game view­ing and the snake and rep­tile park.  As we were there mainly to fly there wasn’t enough time to exper­i­ence everything so another visit needs to be planned.  Mountain fly­ing in a heli­copter can be a chal­len­ging envir­on­ment even for the most exper­i­enced pilot so we go there to learn wind find­ing pro­ced­ures, pin­nacle land­ings, moun­tain approaches and take-offs, moun­tain weather, val­ley fly­ing and heli­copter per­form­ance at altitude.

For me the heli­copter is a place where many emo­tions are exper­i­enced, les­sons are learnt, it’s a keeper of dreams but a place of deadly ser­i­ous encoun­ters yet also where I dis­cover much about life, I learn about joy, pride, humil­ity, fear and over­com­ing fear.  I exper­i­ence much from this place that most people would never see.  At times it ter­ri­fies me, yet I can feel at home here, it is my place where I can truly live.

It was a spec­tac­u­lar, exhil­ar­at­ing experience!!

Useful Links:

• NAC Training Website (National Airways Corporation)
• Zebula Golf Estate & Spa
• Things to Do in Limpopo