july 8 updated!!

July 8, 2016

Woke up to a very grey and overcast day…pretty damp (this actually ended up being the coldest day of my trip, but it was very short lived).  They call it “guti”.  It looked like it was going to rain and be miserable for our trip to Matopos National Park- which involved traveling in a VERY open range rover.  Apparently though, it is too COLD to rain!  It was probably in the 50’s.  Didn’t know that it could be too cold to rain!  We went with two professional guides.  On our way to the park we actually saw a family of three white rhinos walking along the side of the road!  The rhinos have been poached almost to extinction in Africa for their horns.  Asians belief they are better than Viagra and they sell for over $1 million for 10 kilos!  Cutting off the rhinos horn is the same as us cutting our fingernails, so not only can you do it without killing the animal, but the horn will also grow back…so it would make more sense to have rhino farms and have them cut the horns and send them out onto the market and be able to continually cut off the horn.  But, this is not the case and people do not think there should be rhino farms.  Anyway, it is obviously very dangerous for the rhinos to be walking along side the road as it makes them a very easy target for poachers, so there was actually a team of four rangers following the animals and trying to push them far away from the road. 

The park is divided up into sections with teams of rangers assigned to each section and in the morning they go and patrol their section to see where the rhinos are.  It did not take us long to find a family of 5 rhinos!!!  We were able to walk right up to them!  They have very poor eyesight but excellent smell and hearing so they knew we were there but our one guide has been around these animals for most of their lives and they are comfortable with the interaction and were not too bothered by it!  Before we went close to the animals, we had to switch off any GPS apps in our phones because they have found when these pictures hit social media the poachers use the locations and GPS to find the animals and come and kill them!   We sat and watched them for a little while and they wandered away so we followed for a little bit and watched for a while longer.  The one young male came about 15 feet away from us!! 

Took this picture on my phone with no zoom!

Another picture from my phone with no zoom!

These animals are over 4,000 lbs!!  It was hard to imagine that they are one of the Big 5, as they looked so peaceful just grazing and not really giving us a second glace.  I learned that they are most closely related to horses and in hindsight, some of the behaviors are the same.  For example, the one young male walked very close to us and was licking and chewing and mouthing- just like a submissive horse does!  I talked to the guide, Ian, about how they chemically immobilize the animals, and he told me that they have to be within about 100lbs for the dosage or the animals have very severe side effects.  Amazing, since with bears (I did research trapping in NJ), you can just about double the dose and it is still ok.  How do you estimate the weight of a rhino within 100 lbs?!?!   The animals are also given a reversal agent as soon as they are under the effects of the drugs, as it only takes about 35 seconds to cut off their horn.  They overheat very quickly under the drugs too.

After watching the rhinos for a while, we drove around the park and had lunch, where we were visited by some very naughty vervet monkeys who wanted to steal our food.  One managed to get lucky and steal a roll and ran off with it!  In the US, we have squirrels and sea gulls.  Probably the closest thing I can compare it to!

After lunch we hiked up a mountain to see some cave paintings that are over 28,000 years old!!!  They were so lifelike!  The humans in the cave paintings are drawn very stick-like because they believed that if they were too lifelike it would allow spirits to come and inhabit them.  The animals are extremely lifelike and detailed and really look like they were actually running across the wall of the cave.  This particular cave also had shadow paintings, which are cave paintings that you can only see in the shadow!  There are 5 caves total that they have been able to discover these shadow paintings. 

View from outside the cave where there are paintings.

Towards the bottom of the wall, there are so many layers of paintings, producing a solid red effect.  Apparently, if you play around with the colors in iphoto or some other photo editing software you can get the layers of paintings to show through.  I have no clue how to do that so anyone that is good with photo editing that wants to have a try, let me know and I will send you pictures!

Before we left the national park, we visited one of the African Villages.  We were able to meet the chief, who was quite a character and he told stories, in his native language.  He didn’t speak one bit of English, but our guide translated for us.  The chief is 85 years old!  He told us how he helped to build many of the roads throughout the park and also helped to bring the original rhinos into the park.  After listening to the chief’s stories we watched the children who live in the village sing and dance.  It was very neat to experience a very small part of Zimbabwe life.   

Chief Pondo