January 1, 2017
We started the day tracking rhinos. We walked about 2 hours through the bush following fresh tracks, etc.(1). We saw 2 White rhinos, a mother and her son. (White rhinos are not actually white, apparently the name represents a mistranslation of the Dutch word for wide, because the white rhino had a wide mouth. When another rhino species with a narrower mouth was found, they called it the black rhino. Both species are actually grey in color).
On the way back, we also saw a giraffe, zebras, kudus, warthogs and oodles of impala. Nice lunch in the bush. A student from England accompanied us. He was born in Botswana and had lived until he was 7 on the edge of the reserve.
Next up was a close encounter with a cheetah. Cheetahs are critically endangered and there are active breeding programs for release to the wild. Some cheetahs would not survive in the wild, so they go to places like Mokolodi. The cheetah licked me and had a sandpaperish tongue, just like a housecat.
(1) This was old school tracking, where we found fresh hoofprints and followed them. Some other sanctuaries radio-tag the animals to find them. That's cheating (although we used this technique to find cheetahs and leopards later in the trip).
No comments:
Post a Comment