Morning Ride - Giraffes

So Today our major priority was to look for the giraffes. Long-necked animals in a low-bushed area how hard can it be? Well I can tell you, it sure isn’t an easy cookie to trace down these animals. With their spotted skin, they blend in perfectly with the trees and graciously hide themselves. Luckily bless god, we found them at the end of our morning ride just returning back to the camp. Just as we were about to give up hope for (after 3h of searching) we spotted the animals just next to the entering gate of our lodge’s domain. Wow what an experience!!

We saw 3 giraffes, a male with his 2 females. In the whole domain there’s 5 giraffes in total: just 1 male and 4 females, so the male has to split him up into groups of 2 because the ladies don’t like each other that much. So once in a while he just switches camp and enjoys his female company. As the male is still very protective over them, he can get quite aggressive so we couldn’t approach them too close. Luckily, we went close enough to get beautiful pictures and views on these gracious and elegant animals.

They feed on leaves of trees (that’s why for obvious reasons their long neck), with main preference for the Victoria Tree. Apparently, the juice of this tree was used as abortus medium back in the ancient times. Today local people still drink it as tea, but in small amounts because it can get poisonous. This way everything gets recycled in the savanna: the grass by antelopes and zebras, old or sick animals by hyenas and high-up trees by giraffes. So blessed to see these animals, felt so unreal. As if we were walking in the zoo, on the back of a random horse. Just wow.

Along the way we also passed some ostriches again, zebras, impalas and kudus. In one scene there was even zebras together with just 1 impala, because they wanted to take care of him. He had wandered off the group, so now he found comfort with another animal species. Beautiful how nature collaborates and survives this way.Read more