After Makgadikgadi pan it was time to get back on the road and travel south.
At lunch time we found a nice tree and decided to stop there and have a break
After being there for a while I noticed like a small sting in one my my legs... I looked down and saw a tick blood sucking my precious red fluid!! but that wasn't the worst part, I pinched it with my fingers and it came out easily, however when I looked at my feet my trainers were covered with them, at least a dozen of them and there were many more on the ground coming my way, tens of them!!
Before we all went back into Carmen we did an full inspection on everyone getting in...
As I learnt later on, back home and watching a program about the Kalahari, those type of ticks are very common to the Kalahari and they live in the sand under the trees where the animals tend to go at the hottest hours of the day, they follow the CO2 expelled by the animals and that's how they find them, then they attached themselves to them and suck, suck, suck...until the animal moves. At that point they release themselves and get back to the sand to wait for another victim... it seems to be a better tactic than stay with the animal and to fall in the desert with no chance to survive.
I had to have my lunch on the move because the moment I stopped I could see an army of them coming my way...
We also did a stop in a place full of Baobab trees
We visited the Khama Rhino Trust where we camped and spent the night. This is a Rhino sanctuary where animals injured by poachers get rescued and relocated here.
In the morning we went for a safari and a few minutes after starting the safari we already spotted some rhino spores
The guide took his rifle (apparently in all game reserves, guides must take a rifle with them for protection) and followed the spores... after a 10 minute walk we found it.
But the two people with reflex cameras and telescopic sight outflanked the guide (one on each side) and run towards the rhino using the bushes for cover, the guide didn't know what to do, started shouting at them to get back but he couldn't shout too loud or the rhino would hear him, the two keen photographers got really, really close, so close that the rhino saw them and started to get nervous and make some aggressive moves, the guide raised his rifle and point at it (what else could he do)... nobody moved for a few minutes, the two photographers, oblivious to everything just took their time, took their pictures and for our relieve they turned around and re-joined the group... you could see the relieve on the guide's face... he was so close to shoot at the rhino... for the rest of the safari we didn't leave the vehicle... and you couldn't blame him for that really, I think he shaved a few years off his life that day...
Apart from the rhinos we got to see some other animals the park not only had rhinos in it.
After the Khama park, we went back to the road and headed towards Tuli, another game reserve. We were to spend the night there in a nice lodge. When we got there we dropped our bags and went for yet another safari. The sunset was approaching so it was the perfect time for spotting animals, so we all got into a couple of 4x4 and started another safari
Apparently this was a park were you could see leopards, they used to have quite a few but it seems not too far from the park they started to grow cattle and the leopards are not stupid, chasing a cow is piece of cake, chasing a springbok or a zebra is another matter all together. Hence most of them migrated to areas of easier prey.
They did have a nice baobab here too.
After this, we went back to the lodge
No comments:
Post a Comment