Sunday September 7th - still searching for the leopard!

Our day today started out very early, up at 5:30am for a 6:00am walking safari.  We drove for a bit into the reserve, hopped out of the vehicle and started out on foot, we are off to track the White Rhinos.  Our guide Howard is an incredible spotter and tracker, he can pick out the smallest animals while we are driving and asks us… did you see that?  Then he says it a Chameleon in that tree… the chameleon turns out to be the size of my finger… really he can see these things??  After an hour of walking we found the Rhinos and since they have poor eyesight we were able to get up close.  (a little scary to be on foot and close to a Rhino, luckily Howard had a riffle  with him)

 
We all know that Africa has the Big 5, but they also have the little 5 and on our walk we saw some of the little five.  The little 5 are: Elephant Shrew, Buffalo Weaver, Leopard Tortoise, Lion Ant, Rhino Beetle.

This is a Lion Ant that our guide found on our walking safari:

The Giraffe are incredible here, they are so graceful and beautiful… and look how cute they are when they are laying down!

We learned more about the management of private game reserves today, since they have fences around he property it is really important that they control the animal population.  In addition to birth control they often trade the animals between the private reserves or sell the animals to hunting camps.  Not sure how we feel about this, but I suppose they do need to control to populations. 

In South Africa the poaching problems is around the Rhinos, poachers have been know to send spies in as tourist to the private reserves to acquire information about the Rhino population.  The “spies” will ask the guides how many Rhinos they have in the park (the guides are very careful about answering questions about the Rhinos), then when they spot them on a game drive they send the GPS coordinates to the poachers and tell the poachers how many Rhinos are in the reserve.   The poachers know that the Rhinos will remain in this area of the reserve for a couple of days, then they go in and kill them for their horns.  This is completely disgusting and disturbing!

Back out on a night drive, we are still looking for a leopard and hippos out of the water.  We waited by the pond as the hippos started moving around.  There was a lot of activity in the water and lots of noise.  The hippos moved toward the bank but wouldn’t get out while we were there, so we decided to leave and let them go about their business of feeding.  (Don’t want to get in the way of a hippo and dinner :^)  )

A couple of pictures before the sun went down:

We are enjoying some of the local adult beverages:

Yes! a South African Stout... and it is yummy!

Now that we have moved over to the Game Lodge for our last three nights at Zulu Nyala our white noise machine has changed from crickets to bullfrogs.  It is truly incredible to hear these bullfrogs! Trying to add a video, but wifi isn't cutting it.  Will post when we have better wifi.

Fun Facts:

• Hippos leave their babies alone in the water while they go out at night and feed