Africa - Khama Rhino Sanctuary

It is so hard to even know where to begin!  So I think I'll just break out my blogs into different sections, by place or activity, and hopefully I'll get through it all.  First off, I guess I will explain a little more about my trip.  Amy and I went with a tour company called Geckos (I know, the irony!)  it is an Australian company so there were tons of Aussies on the trip.  They gear towards a budget traveller, so we were roughing it!  Seriously...tents, sleeping bags, meals cooked over the open fire...roughing it! It was pure luxury if our camp sites had a shower and a toliet (that actually flushed!)  Needless to say myself and all of my belongings smelled of camp fire after the first night and continued to the remaining 12 days.  There were 18 people on our trip, ranging in age from 20 to lets say, 50ish.  We had people ranging from a personal chef on a yacht, to a vascular surgeon to a parachute packer!  We all met up in Pretoria, South Africa at the Twana Lodge (we didn't know the type of luxury it had to offer at the time!) and met our tour leaders, Dumi the driver, Mischek the chef and Innocent our fearless leader.  We also met what was to become our closest companion over the next week and a half...our big orange tour bus!  Little did we know how much time we would spend in this orange eye sore...Botswana is big, as big as Texas to be exact!

The next morning we set out on the road to the Backroads of Botswana at 6 am sharp!  Again, little did I know this would be the first of many sunrises I would see.  We arrived at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary late that afternoon and set up our camp for the first time.  It took a while, but by the end of the trip we were all pros at setting up and taking down our tents.  The next morning we woke for a 5:30 breakfast and then our first game drive at 6 am.  The Rhino Sanctuary is a protected area and is home to only "grazers" they are meant to help preserve the rhinos and create an environment where they are protected and can hopefully reproduce and increase the dwindling rhino population.  In the sanctuary we saw both black and white rhino, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, warthogs, ostrich, antelope and many different birds.  We were able to get so close to the animals in the vehicles. You can see the rest of the pics on my shutterfly site.