After our Durban trip we swore off travel for a while. But then two of our friends were having birthdays and set up a weekend at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary. http://www.khamarhinosanctuary.com/about.htm Khama is the first President of Botswana. A sanctuary was set aside in his name for the white and black Rhino’s, which are very endangered. The sanctuary has all the other animals except the Lion.
The Sanctuary was only three hours away and a bus could pick us up only 3K from our house. The Sanctuary had camping, a restaurant, bar, gift shop, showers and tiny grocery store. Meaning we only needed to bring clothes and camping equipment for two nights. We could hardly say no. (Many of our friends love camping because it is the only time they have access to running water and a hot shower).
Eleven of us went – and the group skewed slightly older than average PCV age and it was a little easier to keep up and enjoy everything.
We had a braai (bar-b-q) for a couple of meals and went to the rather modern restaurant filled with Europeans, American’s, and Australians for the other two meals.
The restaurant had a nice lighted watering hole right outside and we saw our first huge beautiful White Rhino there. Although Rhino’s are called black and white, they are really all grey. White Rhinos are larger and have different types of mouths than black Rhino’s. One web site said they are called black and white because the English misunderstood the how the Dutch referred to the White Rhino’s and it just stuck. Below are some of the animals at the camp site watering hole.
Several of the attendees were yoga masters and we found a nice flat field and
did all sorts of different yoga which was great!
The next day we played Bacchi ball with some sort of really hard oranges that
Cassie plucked from a tree. She made markings on the balls and a good time was had by all. It always amazes me how many fun games people can make out of nothing when you have no money.
Cassie and Marjorie are good guitar players at home – but chose to bring ukulele’s because they travel much better – we enjoyed the serenade too.
We took a little 3 hour game drive at the end of the day – and we saw a bunch more cool animals.
The only bad part of the trip was our tent. We got a great deal on a 2 man tent and paid P200 ($30). The tent was made in China and the men there are only 5’6’’. I barely fit – and John didn’t fit at all. He could squish in if he slept diagonal – which gave me about 25% of a 2 man Chinese tent. I was very happy I had brought the “Simply Sleep” which made this little mishap tolerable.
It was nice enough to allow us to consider another trip.
I also wanted to update everyone on John’s hair issues:
I will put all the vacation pictures on Facebook soon.