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Honestly, Hilda, I couldn't believe my eyes. They were attacking and made me rethink their nature. At least the mommies were up to the defense.

Porridge,

Really strange behavior of the hornbills...wonder what the explanation could be.

Love the Olifants river view.. always a winner.

All the birdie pics are lovely Beeeg and small. ...needless to say one stands out more.

Inside the camp delivered great photo opportunities.

Awesome sightings Porridge .
Really strange behavior by the hornbills .
Great fluffball sighting .
Beautiful birdies .
Thanks for sharing

Porridge! Have just caught up on your TR (having been AWOL from the forum for a LONG time!).

Great to have met you and Jax on two occasions at Satara - you are right, what a laugh we all had when we were holding the Happy B-Day message up by the fence!

Looking forward to meeting up with you both again on 26 April .

Wendy

Now why is this TR on a stand still???????????

I'm apologizing a lot lately, it seems

I'll have a new episode for y'all asap, promise..

yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So glad that you are back porridge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whoops, time just flies when you aren't paying attention. It's been ages since I posted, and for that my humblest apologies!!! Without further ado, let's press on ...

Day 6

After grabbing some wake-up juice and some Ouma's, we left the gate at 4.35 am which found us driving in near perfect darkness for the first 45 minutes. Headlights on, and hoping for the best, we turned onto the S100 to see what this infamous road would deliver to us today.

In the pre-dawn light which was very grey rendering my flash completely useless, we saw these lads loping along.



and a bit further on these who had somehow managed to get their false eyelashes on in the dark.



and a lone wildebeest a bit later who had fallen in love with this tree's scratching abilities. He spent ages enjoying himself immensely.



Cruising along a little later, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye which I initially thought was a grey Putco bus travelling at 60 km/h through the bush coming my way scaring me half to death. It turned out to be this "sea cow" moving really fast, and she thundered over the road ahead of us and then was gone into the bush. Obviously in a hurry to get back to the water, or to a sale somewhere.



Another blighter in a hurry was this one who just would NOT stop. Run, run, run, run, run. I'm quite impressed I managed to get even this poor pic.



Not even 100 metres further on, I got very excited as we saw this. (Before anyone gets cross with me, we had left the S100 quite some time before).



I couldn't figure out though, quite why this one and the others were extremely nervous, and kept on running backwards and forwards incessantly. Until we saw what was closer to us less than 5 metres off the road. A freshly poached rhino, with the deep hack and gash marks clearly visible and still bleeding : A deep pall of depression settled over us coupled with blinding rage. How DARE they!!!

I managed to get some phone signal a short distance up the road, and after an extremely frustrating 10 minutes on the emergency number, I was understood enough so that they could give me the Satara ranger's number. I called her, and within 20 minutes, anti-poaching patrols with the dogs were on scene. The ranger later gave me feedback that this was indeed a poaching incident, and not a territorial fight. The bastards managed to get over the border before they could catch them though. Very dejected, we moved on and planned to head back to camp via the shortest route.

KNP, bless her heart, attempted to cheer us up with a couple of cute sightings, but we were finding it difficult to come to terms with the horror that we had witnessed, and I only got a few pics on our way back.






Back at camp, it was by unspoken agreement that that's where we would stay for the rest of the day. Did see this little guy from our patio though.



Over lunchtime we met up with Cheetah2111, Heksie, WendyA ,Tedredrum and his brother at the Satara restaurant which lifted our spirits a lot after having shared the story of the dreadful sighting with them. Again, my pic taking abilities deserted me for the mini-meet

Day 7 will follow shortly with our trip to Pretorius Kop.

Great to have you back Porridge!

What a horrible experience , I'm not surprised you took the rest of the day off. Pity they didn't catch the scum that did it.

Thank your lucky stars that you didn't stumble onto this while the scum were still on the scene.

Finally my hubby has continued with the TR It was indeed a very sad day

Jaxi

I am so sad and I can only imagine how depressing that must have been. you are right HOW DARE THEY!!!!!

Porridge,

Thanks for continuing with your TR...special sightings with super pics.

Terrible that the day had to be marred by this very crime.

Still enjoying your TR, thank you for sharing!

Indeed a VERY SAD sighting Porridge!

Awesome Hippo in a hurry, as well as the Jackal!

Love the little Tree Agama too!

Awesome sightings Porridge .

Great birdie pic's .

Yes it is quite scary and at the same time great to see a hippie out of the water and in the veldt . We had such encounters a few times in KNP over the years . One was actually chasing us where he was lying in a puddle next to the tar road and did not like taking pic's of . Unbelievable how quickly they can motor with those bodies .

Thanks for sharing .