Addo
Up at 5:30 am to go on Safari. This morning we got a better view of the elephants, saw many warthogs and got to spend a significant amount of time with the water buffalo. The completely open-air vehicle provided 360 degree views around the park. At one point, we were basically surrounded by the buffalo heard, more than 60 by Troy’s count. While we now had the understanding that water buffalo are some of the more dangerous animals, we were completely at ease in the hands of our guide Steve.
After Safari we had breakfast outside. While waiting for our breakfast, a group of elephants stopped by the water hole near where we were sitting and a lone elephant was standing by the entrance of our lodge looking to get in.
The afternoon was quiet and the Bradley’s skipped lunch as we are definitely feeling over fed. Tea was at 3:30 pm and then we were off again at 4:00 pm. During the drive it started to drizzle. We could see where the elephants were congregating and decided to head over to see if we could get a close look. We got up to the field where they were and got very close. We saw many baby elephants that could walk between their mothers legs. They were very cute as they tried to hide from the rain. We drove around a little more and were getting pretty wet and cold so we asked to go back. On our way back to the lodge we saw that up ahead we were about to cross paths with something quite large. It turned out to be our first encounter with a black rhino. Rhino’s cannot see very well and rely heavily upon sense of smell and hearing. As we were mostly downwind, he continued to get very close to us, probably around 50 feet away. At that point, he picked up on something and in a split second he turned and then ran away. Again very intimidating! Steve our guide made mention that he had never been charged by this animal, but other guides had. After this great experience we were reminded of the rain and headed back for dinner.