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When I saw the Mail & Guardian lamp pole poster headed "Balls-up at the Lotto" - I felt I had to post another Marakele photo.



The previous photo of the square-lip, now having his bath...

Hi hoping someone can help here - my girlfriend and i are having a slight disagreement as we have just been to a safari park in England and they have white rhino in it - they state in their book that due to poaching the white rhino now only exists in game reserves in Zululand in the entire Southern Africa - please can someone confirm for me this is not true - as I keep insisting to her that White Rhino's are found in Kruger Park, Milliwane (Swaziland) in Zimbabwe and some Reserves in the Eastern Cape (amongst other places) - she says they know what they are talking about and wouldn't say it if it wasn't true can someone pleaassssssssssse help with this little discsussion and confirm who is right????

This is not true. White rhino are doing quite well and are easily seen in KNP. Have a look at wikipedia: white rhino & rhinos-irf.org for more background info.

Maybe if there information was pre 1970 or so , when that was indeed the case .

There are around 15000 White rhino in South Africa now , with aprox 5000 in the KNP alone .
About 1/3 live on private lodges/farms .

I wanted to post it under the rhino topic but found that it was locked? It seems like everything to do with rhinos are just going wrong for me

The last rhino we saw was in Sept 05. He took us for a very enjoyable Sunday stroll down the H3 for about a km. Every now and then he stopped, looked if we were still following and then continued walking in the middle of the road.
We had 6 cars behind us and when he decided to make a wee, (that took about a minute) my daughter thought that he was now marking his territory and where are we going to reverse to?!? That was quite funny at the time.


Well since then, we've only been in the middle and the North and I haven’t seen even one rhino. Believe me there was plenty rhino sightings on the boards...

How can I explain this, we see lions sometimes even 4 times in one day and after 17 days of seeing lions and more lions they start becoming like the impala. Only worth a photo when they are in close range. So when the people stop you to ask if you have seen lion and you rumble-off, ja, we pasted them a couple of times, BUT did you see any RHINO? They look at you as if you come from a different planet….

It is absolutely amazing how you could miss something with your whole heart when you just dont see them. All the times that we were in Kruger since '05 we took the looong drive down to the south and out by the bottom gates in an attempt to see rhino. But sadly to say, nothing...

There is a pair that hangs around Croc Bridge camp. We saw them every day in December.
The Afsaal chappie is well documented.
We often see them near Orpen on the H7
The Fayi loop round Pkop is a fave place of theirs.
The private road to Biyamitio often has sightings.

They must send out an APB to scatter when you are around, WH.

That is because we split the topic into the two different kinds of rhino: Hook-lipped Rhinoceros and Square-lipped Rhinoceros.
I take it this was a Square-lipped Rhinoceros (a white one), or you would have been jumping up and down? If so I can add it to it's topic.

I must have been damn lucky this past week, up the road from croc bridge the pair are still roaming but on the the 3rd May there were 4 together, on the 4th May there were 6. On different routes I mapped out for each day I saw rhino, at duke's dam I saw a black rhino(that was amazing). Must have seen about 10 rhino excluding the rhino at croc bridge, the biggest one I saw on the S114.
Still remember where I saw every one of them.

Sorry DQ I always seem to stuff up. Thank you bentley, I feel much better. . But have you seen any fuuuurther up North?

Sorry to say but no, the only one I've seen further up the park was down the road from Tsokwane.

Hi there

I also feel your pain but i have had the opposite bad luck of 2 many Rhino's.On our Last trip in Dec We saw 27 different rhino's in a day and after that stopped counting on our trip.In six days we had only seen two lions.I hope our luck changes.

PS doesnt really matter anyway as long as we get to be in bush!!!

WE see loads further down towards croc bridge or even try the area around paul kruger gate. On all my trips up north i think we have seen rhino um 0. They enjoy the sorthern region and are morew used to the cars. There are more tourists down south then up north and also go to pilanesberg and then you will see plenty.

Rhino were of course introduced into the south first - but have been expanding their range ever since. We saw a group of 12 south of Olifants a year ago - and if you do a walk there, usually around Bangu, you will see their trails and middens all over the place. Might not see the rhino of course!

Black rhino have certainly reached Olifants, and white are reported throughout the Park now.

But as with everything in the Park, it is all luck, even when you know where to go. We watched a white rhino in February for 30 minutes walk around a dam south of Olifants, pass with 30 feet of us, cross the road and disappear. As we left another car arrived - and would not have known a thing. As we drove south over the next few days down to LS we saw many rhino - more than I have seen in 20 years! But not a lion to be seen anywhere.




Richard

We saw this rhino on the road from Ls to croc bridge all the time. Hears a pic.


resized by bert
Oh and could any one else please tell me if they have ever been chased by rhino or any other scary situation.

The last time we were staying at Berg & Dal we also so allot of rhino. One of them came quite close to our car, it was a bit scary.




Our guide from our bush braai at Shingwedzi told me that the rhino dont like the mopani, they only like sweet grass from the south. But what was bugging me was, why was all the sighting boards in the North always pecked full of rhino sightings.