SAFARI! AFRICA! EXCITEMENT
A peaceful afternoon African game drive was shattered by a rhino whirling to lumber toward our Land Rover!
Seeing an angry rhino thundering your way, with seemingly increasing momentum, ranks right up there as one of the perspiration-producing moments in my years with the San Diego Zoo.
I admit, I may have been damp in more places than one.
We had riled a mother black rhino (calf trotting along beside her) who thought our photo safari had come a bit too close. But instead of just a warning with a short charge before veering off, she seemed bent on ramming us with that ominous-looking horn.
Fortunately, the alert driver had his foot on the accelerator, ready for a fast take-off. We escaped as the prehistoric-looking beast came within twenty yards of running a horn up — our gas tank!
While standing with my trusty camera thrust out the top, I snapped off a photo of the near-miss before being thrown back against the seat as we accelerated.
My wife later said it was like someone trying to photograph their own death.
I can assure you that a photo safari in the bush and its memories are treasured long after - even without a wild beast charge!
We were fortunate to have experienced Africa many years ago. Our band of zoological society members spent 21 never-to-be-forgotten days, fascinated at every turn. Fortunately, it was before the current political turmoil that has made some favorite areas of East Africa dangerous for tourists.
We were one of the last safari tours permitted to venture into Uganda before the nutty dictator, Idi Amin, devastated that beautiful country. And as with every member in our group, my wife and I have wanted to return again to the limitless expanse of the Serengeti, the pristine clearness of a morning in the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Where else can you thrill to the thundering hoofs of huge herds of wildebeast across the plains, or see skitterish impala leaping five feet in the air in another of those wild aimless cavalcades?
It seems hardly believable, after having flown in comfortable jet liners for about 12,000 miles and landing in the modern capital of Kenya - Nairobi - complete with tall white buildings and wide avenues - to find oneself at the dawn of the world at Amboseli.
There, life unfolded for us as it did at the beginning of creation: giraffes gravely balancing their way against the resplendent sunrise, zebras grazing, secure in the knowledge that predators have had their fill, a replete lion resting in the shade of a thorn tree…and as far as the eye could see, the endless horizon broken only by the flat tops of acacia trees, or the imposing cloud-ringed top of Kilimanjaro.
And, for me, Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania made a lasting impression as I stared into the digs where famed anthropologist, Dr. Louis Leakey, continued searching for man’s beginnings. I ventured down to the lower level where a small monument featured bones of Zinjanthropis, uncovered there and estimated to be l,750,000 years old.
Standing in the area where Dr. Leakey and his workers had also uncovered arrow-heads carved for hunting in the Stone-Age, I never felt so young and happy to be alive!