Getting up at 5.15 in the morning is like torture to me. I don’t function properly. But the prospect of seeing more animals on the morning tour got me going.
Especially because most animals we saw yesterday were lazy in the summer heat, and they were more likely to be out and about in the wee hours of morning.
We saw the Zebras and found the Water Buffalos, which we missed yesterday, and a number of rarer animals like the Golden Wildebees, a rare Gnu that inherited a recessive gene from its parents and came out with a golden fur.
We also saw an Antilope Kind that, every three or four generations, has a couple of totally black animals.
The highlight though was a stand-off between the Rhinos and the dominant male of a herd of Gnus. The Rhinos seem to have come too close to the heard, so he ran up to the 5-ton Rhinos and confronted them.
He’s got some courage! Our guide explained us that a running Rhino with its 5 tons, at 40 km/h speed, will crush every single bone in your body.
Still, the Rhinos were more annoyed than anything. The mom got in between him and her little one, and then retreated to the other side of the river.
The male of the Gnus then marked his territory and left to chase off two other Rhinos on the other side of the herd.
Our morning tour was a bit shorter, to allow us a little time for breakfast, before we were off to our ride on the elephants. What a perfect Christmas Day.
