Khama Rhino Sanctuary

For the weekend (June 25^th-26^th) that just passed, the QPID Bots team had planned on going to Tuli Block. The Tuli Game Reserve (makes up Tuli Block) is a collection of private reserves located in the far Eastern corner of Botswana and it was our preferred destination because of its proximity to the Limpopo River (which Iz is desperately trying to visit), black-mane lions (Scar from the Lion King), and night drives (which aren’t conducted in the national parks). We started planning the trip the weekend before when we were in Bobonong and so had a pretty good idea of how things were to play out. As has been the trend, whenever we plan something, nothing goes as it is supposed to… and come Thursday evening, Tuli Block was a no go. Iz and I quickly whipped together a plan for a trip to Khama Rhino Sanctuary and because there was no accommodation (campsite) available, we had to figure out how to effectively get there and back using public transport in one day. Looking back on it, if we had stuck to that plan, we would have flopped hard…

When Chloe and Lyndsay arrived on Friday, we went for some delicious pretty authentic Indian dining and desperately tried to get our hands on a car to make travelling easier. Things got so desperate that we resorted to calling FOR SALE advertisements and begging the owners to allow us to take their car for the weekend. Im sad to say that though our phone calls were entertaining, no one wanted to give their cars to a bunch of foreign students….I wonder why…

Then, the Legend of Chloe turned up and decided that there was no way in hell she wasn’t spending the night in Khama Rhino Sanctuary. Where Iz and I had failed at securing accommodation the day before, Chloe squeezed out a campsite at KRS through pure persistence that we just needed a piece of land where we could pitch our tent. After arriving at Khama, we realized how legendary Chloe actually was because for a camp with 18 campsites, the place was bumping (in a camping sense)! We were actually squeezed into the sanctuary, but that turned out to be a pretty big blessing….

You can sort of refer to the map of Eastern Botswana posted earlier for this next paragraph or skip it entirely because it’s about getting to KRS. FUN! The Khama Rhino Sanctuary is located in the bottom center of the map but the actual route we took is cutoff.

7:30- we took our first ever combi ride to the bus rank.

8:00-Got on the bus to Gabarone again and got off at Palapye 165 km away from the Ghetto

I lost track of time after that but in Palapye we tried to get our hands on a map because up until then we were travelling blind. We got on a bus to Serowe from Palapye with an idea of which direction we were to take but none on what mode of transport would get us there. At the Serowe bus rank, while in search for a taxi to get a quote, I spotted a man wearing some KRS clothing. He couldn’t take us to the sanctuary because he had to run some errands but ended up letting us ride in the back of his truck (best mode of transport EVER!) all the way to a bus stop where he handed us off to a lady that worked at the sanctuary. We hopped on the bus headed to Orapa through Paje and got off at the gates of the Khama Rhino Sanctuary at around 1:30PM.

If you’d like to know more about the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, please visit www.khamarhinosanctuary.com but just for an overview, it was established to rescue the rhino population in Botswana that was hunted to the brink of extinction. The sanctuary is a fenced in area covering 4300 hectares and maintained by the 4 surrounding villages and the only place in Botswana to find the black rhino. It houses between 30 and 40 white rhino and 4 black rhinos and it’s because of KRS efforts that a handful of white rhinos have been reintroduced into other parks.

The only way to reach the campsites is by car and so we were a pretty hopeless bunch. Everyone else we saw seemed to be the frikkin rich khaki donning camper types as they had pimped out safari trucks that had off-the-ground tents with ladders and whatnot. We waited for a KRS truck and hitched a ride to our campsite. After admiring the setting, and other people’s “tents”, we set up our ghetto Canadian Tire type tent and proceeded to devour rye bread and Pralinutta ( A copy of nutella) sandwiches. A man in a supercool 4X4 expedition truck pulled into our campsite and asked us if we would be willing to move to a different campsite. He was a South African safari tour operator and wanted us to move close to his campsite because the other group there was too big and would have cramped up his group of people. We willfully agreed and so we moved. But it wasn’t the usual get-in-the-back-of-the-truck moving: The guy’s car only had storage space and no passenger seats and so he suggested that we ride ON TOP of his truck. And that is exactly what we did. It was like riding an overgrown male elephant. That’s the furthest Id been off the ground since flying into Francistown and so I was prettyyy scared.

We setup our tent for the second time and set out collecting firewood before our 4PM game drive. After about an hour of foraging in extremely dry bush, we were picked up by our guide OJ and headed out for some game viewing. There were sightings of impala, eland, gemsbok, springbok, Burchell’s zebra, blue wildebeest, ostriches, and a number of other bird species. 

A cohort of Burchell's zebra at a watering hole

A female ostrich closely guarding her foraging offspring

Burchell's zebra at sunset

But the rhinos easily stole the show. Iz spotted the first way in the distance and it was a HUGE male white rhino trudging along. We then drove to a bird hide where birds were to be anticipated. What turned up was a crash of white rhinos probably 10 meters distance from us. It was incredibly humbling being the presence of such massive and strange looking creatures. 

A nervy white rhino

The rhino is one of those animals we learn to recognize in early development because of its distinctive horns and so seeing a group of them that close up was just so……cool. Unlike the elephants of Chobe, the rhinos were really nervy and fidgety because of our presence. They have good ears and a strong sense of smell and so as soon as our cameras started clicking, they peaced. My memory card decided to fail me and so I lost all my pictures of the game drive up until after the bird hide and so variety in rhino pictures is lacking. We luckily stumbled upon the same group further into our drive and so I got a couple more pics.

A crash of 5 white rhinos watching our every move.

Unfortunately we didn’t spot one of the 4 black rhinos but that was always going to be difficult seeing as they prefer to live in the bush. A girl also notified us that earlier in the morning, by campsite 13 (which is right behind ours), she had seen a mother leopard with 2 cubs……We have now missed the lions of Savuti feasting on an elephant and a mother leopard with her two cubs…bummer.

The last half hour of the game drive was painfully cold and so the first thing we did back at our campsite was start a fire. The twigs were so dry that all it took was one matchstick and we had a fully-fledged fire. We set about eating “dinner” and this consisted of sitting on our bums around the fire and roasting hotdogs on twigs we had picked earlier. This was when our tour operator friend showed his appreciation for us moving for him earlier on. He walked over to us and said “ Your dinner looks very lacking. Would you mind doing us a favor and having some of our food?” This was after the guy had provided us with 2 bags of firewood free of cost. His people came about 2 minutes later with a gourmet meal and it rivaled any top notch cooking I’ve had. There was a greek salad with feta cheese, black and green olives, and realll cucumbers, a stew made with delicious potatoes, zucchinis, parsnips, and carrots, and rice that was soft as anything. We followed our gourmet meal with a pretty epic dessert of split banana stuffed with pralinutta (nutella) and marshmallows heated in the fire (this was made by us, not provided by the tour operator).

The fire was put out at around 9:45 and the next half hour was spent admiring the beauty of the night sky. The number of stars rivaled the one I had seen while camping at Lake Manyara in Tanzania though the Milky Way was even more prominent this time round. The sky was so clear that the stars formed a dome that disappeared over the horizon. It was a pleasure seeing this as there are very few places left where urban sprawl hasn’t polluted the sky with its lights.

My sleeping bag had a comfort rating of 2 degrees and an extreme rating of 0 but I was still freeeeezing the whole night. I can’t even imagine what Lyndsay went through with only a blanket to keep her warm. I apparently also sound like a wild animal when I sleep. :/

In the morning, OJ came to pick us up at 7AM. We talked for 20 minutes about the importance of his work and the KRS and reviewed the differences between the black and white rhino. He dropped us off in Paje where he had to run some errands and we were left to hitchhike to Serowe. Vehicles on the road were scarce but the 2^nd car that rolled by stopped for us and the elderly man driving took us all the way to Palapye. We got off at the Palapye bus rank and just as we walked in, the bus to Ftown pulled in and we were on our way. At 10:15, after what was probably the most efficient use of transport yet, we reached back in Ftown and our adventure came to an end. Success.

Please don’t hesitate to comment. Seriously. Don’t be scared. No one but me cares what you have to say. Don’t be shy. You can even hide your comment from the public. Id just like to know what you think of these posts. More pictures, less writing? SUGGESTIONS PLEASE.