On previous safaris, rhino had proven to be elusive and so part of the ‘brief’ for this trip was to find rhino in the wild. We had success on the second day and what a sighting it was!
Our safari covered two very different parts of Africa. One of the reasons for this being that rhino do not occur everywhere, therefore we chose to start our search in the Lowveld of South Africa. During the first few game drives we found plenty signs of rhino in the form of fresh scrapings and tracks, but none worth following up on. By the third drive we needed to ‘up our game’ and shortly after leaving camp, we crossed the tracks of a large bull white rhino that had passed that way a few hours ahead of us.
Looping around and in front of where he had walked, we followed his tracks until we received a call that even fresher tracks were found a short distance from where we were. No tracking was needed here, because as we neared the point of where the tracks had been reported, we spotted a large bull rhino in an open area, several hundred meters away from us.
We slowly approached the rhino bull, carefully observing his mood. As it turned out, he was very relaxed and we managed to maneuver the vehicle to within about 50 feet of him.
The late afternoon light and clear patch of bush he had chosen to rest in, were the perfect combination to capture beautiful photographs. We sat quietly and watched as he lay in the red sand, while oxpeckers groomed him. A bull such as this would have been a territorial bull, judging from his size and the size of his horn. He was in his prime and had no doubt had his share of fights with other bulls in an attempt to keep any females that entered his area, for himself. But for now he was taking a break, which gave us exactly what we were after… a close up and very clear view of a white rhino in the wild!