KHAMA RHINO SANCTUARY, Botswana

 6/7 JUNE 2011

KHAMA RHINO SANCTUARY

Up close and personal with a rhino - aarrgghh

A full day driving but with a whole back seat to myself, who’s complaining. Plenty of tea breaks for the driver, Bill who did a sterling job and we swung into Khama Rhino Sanctuary around 4.30pm to be greeted by an astronomical pricing structure. But we’re here; we pay and soon get set up amid the wild animal warnings with recommendations about a 50m range. Jill heads off to look for the loo block without any luck so I try next and am successful.

However just as I step out I notice the rustling movement in the bushes just over there. I’m guessing/hopeful it’s a zebra by the colours I can see but NO, out strides a full height, fully grown rhinoceros – not what I want to see 5 metres from where I’m standing.

OMG another frozen moment trying to remember what to do and that would be to back away into the ablutions block and peer through the door at my new friend who is none too keen to clear off. I figure that if it wants to charge me, I’m safe in this block but now it is twilight and I would like to get back to the campsite very soon. 15 minutes later the rhino has finished munching round about and starts to amble off down the very road I have come on meaning I need to find another way around back to camp as I’m not very keen to follow a rhino. So off I walk briskly on another road that curves around in the general direction I want to go. Walking, walking, walking to reach a bird hide on the park boundary – no I’m not quite lost because we all know a fence must lead somewhere! Other than return after the rhino I decide to follow the fence line with one eye on the setting sun and another on the track looking for paw prints cause now it’s dinnertime if you’re a big cat!

I whistle a while because if the animals have a choice they won’t come near humans so I’d like to give them plenty of warning and after a couple of kilometres weighing up my choices I decide to turn around and head back to the bird hide where if worst comes to worst I could climb up and I’d be off the ground. to wait for someone to come and find me. Now my thoughts wander to Jill and Bill who may now be wondering where I am, I’m sure, and I am also very aware that I don’t have a torch or warm clothing, only a half can of beer in a stubby holder. OK, I start to co-eee in case anyone is starting to look for me and I make it back to the bird hide from where I can now see the a radio tower lit up against the night sky. I’d noticed the tower walking to the ablutions block, so I decide to keep coeee’ing and follow the track back to the block, all the while trying to listen for more bush inhabitants/wild animals. From the toilet block I can make out lights and walk briskly towards them to find Jill at the caravan door and Bill already out on his second turn about in the car looking for me.  I explain about the rhino, who had not long finished visiting the campsite and taking an alternative path, when Bill returns and they both express relief that I’ve made it back because one of their concerns was who to contact in Oz, if I did go missing!! When I explain I’d been coeee’ing they had all thought it was a bird!! I vow to only go to the toilet block in daylight now and during the night I can definitely hear animals outside my tent but I remain zipped up tight inside and when morning comes sure enough there are plenty of paw prints outside the tent and the caravan had been ‘thumped’ many times by something big enough to wake them up and send Bll out investigating.  Over breakfast I take time to study the map just in case, and I estimate I was probably 5 km away from the entrance when I decided to turn around last night.

A baby only a mother could love

As Bill and Jill have visited the park before they already have an idea of where they had seen animals last time. We head out and soon enough get bogged in soft sand! We have a few tries at building up around the tyres after Bill lets some air out of them when an army truck turns up and we ask them to help give us a push out which gets us out of strife and we’re on o, and check out the ur way again. Animals, animals everywhere – we saw rhino, eland, impala, steenboks, wildebeest, ostrich, brown hyena, kudu, zebra – alas we didn’t see any caracal or leopards.

We head in to Serowe to stock up on wine and check out the serowe statue which was loking a bit negleted. Apparently botswanians were a little disapointed that he married a white woman so his son and successor is a lighter shade of pale! Back to the Sanctuary and I have lunch at the restaurant and walk back to camp feeling more confident now but still alert – its daylight, there are signs and I’m a little braver now! We drive out mid afternoon  for more animal spotting  and sunset watching before retiring to a another great dinner and more wine on this, our last night together camping.

After several days trying to plan the next week or so travel before Terry arrives, let alone the next weeks after that with him, I think I’ve come up with a cunning plan – I will try for a mozambique visa in Gaberone, head down to Jo’berg to stay one night in Soweto then travel to Mozambique and up to the beach (and warmth and sunshine)for a week then back down and out to Swaziland for a week – that should keep me amused till Tez arrives.

A short ride to Palapye, last photos together and then they u turn off to the border and I join the crowd at the corner. I let it be known I’m heading to Gaberone and sure enough a car turns up and I get offered the seat – but I defer to another woman who had been waiting before me. Then a bus turns up and we’re all on our way to Gaberone.

FACT: Khama doesn’t require anti poaching security for it’s populations of black and white rhinos – it is situated right beside an army training base who regularly patrol the environs. IT was they in fact, who pushed Bills car out of a sand drift we got bogged in.