Since you will no doubt read the most recent posting first I will just give you a brief update on where I am. It is 4.00pm Friday 8th February 2013 and I have just lost another hour of my life since we are 3 hours in advance of UK. We left Durban yesterday evening and we now have 3 days at sea en route to Reunion. Currently we are about 200 miles of the coast of Madagascar. I have had a splendid lunch of Springbok leg and fillet – gamey and delicious.
The picture is of the entrance to ‘my little castle’ that stretched some 5 metres either side of the main door. To the left a huge double shower and toilet and to the right an even more spacious bedroom with mesh, zipper walls which could be rolled up to give access to the vast verandah overlooking the waterhole. And no I never did roll those up not after my close encounter with a male warthog!! The beds all had mosquito nets and a canister with which to spray oneself before retiring so all in all apart from the animal sounds a peaceful night.
So a little more about the Onguma Plains Game Reserve that covers 34,000 hectares (1Ha = 100 acres – so pretty darn big especially when you are looking for wild animals) itself is privately owned and extends in an north-easterly direction along the eastern fringe of the Etosha National Park. Originally a vast cattle ranch, malaria, cattle lung and foot and mouth disease made cattle rearing unprofitable and so the owners with great foresight allowed the terrain to return to natural habitats such as savannah, bushveld, omuramba and dry pan and to stock the reserve with only indigenous species of wildlife. Today the reserve boasts some 30 animal species including kudu, giraffe, elephant, eland, oryx, hartebeest, zebra, impala, lions, leopards and black rhinoceros.
The latter were introduced some 14 years ago under a project funded by the Government to set up and research the breeding of white rhinoceros. Even back then the poaching of rhino horn for the Chinese medicine – chiefly as an aphrodisiac, totally unproven of course – was a problem but nothing like the horrific scale witnessed today. In South Africa alone last year over 800 rhino were slaughtered and to date this year 90 have been killed such are the rates paid by the criminal syndicates for the horn. At this rate rhino will be extinct within 15 years. Even the practice of cutting off the horn – it is carotene like our fingers nails and will grow back – has not saved the slaughter since when the poaching gangs stalk and find a dehorned rhino they kill it anyway so that they don’t waste time tracking these animals! It really is a vile business.
Anyway back to the rhinos at Onguma. From a breeding base of 10 there are now 25 in the reserve and Onguma has managed so far to avoid poaching by involving the local bush people – employing them in the upkeep of the Reserve, building the hotel and providing services for the tourists.
The Etosha National Park has also so far been successful in defeating poachers so much so that none of the animals scatter when you come across them, on the contrary their natural curiosity enables you to get within feet of almost any animal as you will see.
I promise some animal pictures soon!!!
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