Walking in the Bush

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Geo: -24.7805, 26.2972

Today I took a day off work so that I could go with Paul for his assessment bush walk. Paul, I and his assessor Megan left the lodge at 6:30am. Just after leaving the lodge we stopped to watch five white rhinos. It was a very nice sight to see so many of them together slowly walking and eating grass.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the lodge Paul parked the Land Cruiser to the side of the road. He then let the park officials know where we were and that we were doing a walk in the area, so that nobody would be alarmed when they saw the empty vehicle.

This was going to be the second time that I have been on a bush walk in a big 5 area. The last time I did a bush walk was in Kruger Park and that was over two years ago. I was a bit nervous that we would come across an animal before spotting it.

After about ten minutes I did start to enjoy the walk, but I was very aware of my surroundings and every little sound made me jump. We stopped to closely look at a community spider web. This was a huge web, the size of a bird's nest.

Paul then spotted some white rhinos. There were two of them and they were close by. They had not seen us – their eyesight is not very good, but their hearing is. Paul frequently checked the direction of the wind by picking up grass and dropping it to see which way it falls. He then led us closer to them. It was very exciting.

We quietly and slowly walked closer to them. We could hear them eating grass. We were so close to them and they had no idea that we were there. They were about 10 metres away from us. After about ten minutes we moved on. We walked up a little hill. From here we had a great view of the reserve. We then walked back to the car. It was a great walk and it was very nice to stop along the way and focus on the small things. On the drive back to the lodge we saw a bull elephant and some waterbuck.

Later in the afternoon, the three of us went for a short game drive. We didn't see much at all.

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Photos

02 Nest
A community spider's web.

04 Wasp
A wasp's nest.

06 Bee Eater
A colourful European Bee Eater.

07 Waterbuck
A waterbuck looking at us.

08 Kudu
A beautiful male kudu with his long horns.

09 Track
A lion's track in the sand.

10 View
The view of the car as we walked to the caves.