The Game Reserve on Horseback - Sept 23rd

We are off ...

Our evening in the game reserve gave us just a taste of nature here in South Africa so we have decided to do it all over again on horse back this time.  The evening was much warmer.

After getting everyone seated on their horse, for some the very first time we headed off to the wilderness.  We discovered that the animals are much less intimidated by us on horseback than in a vehicle.  We immediately spotted some elands and nyalas.  A little further down the trail we came upon some white rhinos.  A group of females and young ones.  We also learned about the serious poaching problem they have on all the reserves.  The price for a rhino horn is in the millions of rands (7 rand ~ 1 dollar) which makes it hard to resist for some.  In the past 3 weeks, this reserve had been poached – one rhino was killed, another one darted but found alive.

Mom!

They've lost interest in us!

Now our adventure truly begins!  As we continued on the trail, we came across 2 young bull rhinos.  Apparently they are quite curious and territorial.  To our amazement and horror, they began to follow us.  For 5 kms. we trotted through the reserve with them closely on our heels finally to have them give up when we got to a wide open space where we could spread out and display our group size.  Our fantastic version – we were chased out of the game reserve by 2 young bull rhinos.  Reality – we were in their territory and they wanted to check us out and make sure we knew where we were.  With but a few bumps and bruises and a lot of adrenaline we have a great story to tell.  The rest of the trail somehow seemed uneventful.

A beautiful evening

Now on to the next adventure …