The moments I love the most are the peaceful, the calm and the quiet moments when the animals don’t know or don’t mind that you are there. This can be tricky to achieve with a loud vehicle filled with excited guests on a safari holiday but I have been lucky enough to do a fair amount of tracking lately.
Recently when we were on the morning safari drive we noticed a lot of white rhino activity; territorial scrapings, fresh dung added to middens and a lot of fresh tracks along the road. We followed the tracks in the road for some time until we came to a river crossing, we could see where they had crossed so we headed across the river and picked up their tracks on the opposite bank. Soon after crossing the river, the tracks led off into the bush, we quickly grabbed radios and off we went following the tracks on foot.
The tracks were very fresh so we made haste as we were trying to step quietly and keep not only our eyes open but all of our sense alert. In parts the tracking was relatively easy, we could clearly see where the bushes and dew had been disturbed but in parts it was more difficult with this area being very popular with rhinos and there been a lot of tracks of varying ages.
Walking through the bush gives you such a different perspective and the opportunity to get really close to the smaller things you wouldn’t necessarily notice from the car. While we were on the rhino trail we were also lucky enough to come across some impala and a little further on some water buck. That really got my heart rate going as at first I did not see them but could only hear something crashing through the bushes. After a couple of deep breathes and a few steps further we spotted the rhinos we were looking for. They were a mother and calf, feeding merrily, it was awesome to watch them relaxed and calm. Although we couldn’t see them clearly, they were not far and the feeling from seeing animals on foot is so much more exciting than from the vehicle. You can see the finer details and you can even smell them and totally appreciate the real, enormous size of the animals. We watched them and tried to co-ordinate for the vehicle to get a visual but sadly the animals spooked and dashed in the thicker bush further from the road. We decided to leave it at that, deciding to try again on the later drive and as luck would have it that afternoon they came across four rhinos lying in the road.
Although the sighting from the vehicle was amazing, from a ranger’s perspective, I wouldn’t trade the reward of finding and viewing these incredible animals on foot.
Justine Brown
Junior Ranger at the Vuyani Safari Lodge