What a joy to walk with all available senses straining to pick up signs of not only elephant and buffalo, but now also rhino. On our walk we found fresh rhino tracks, we could see where a rhino rolled on its back, and where a rhino and an elephant bumped into each other and then sped off in opposite directions. Amazing, new and wonderful in country that I have no memory of rhino. I wonder if the oldest elephants in Laikipia can remember rhino in this landscape? No other megafauna live long enough. East Africa has lots of two foot high boulders, often near springs or rivers, that have been polished to a shine by rhino over millenia. So many of them have been left unused in the aftermath of poaching over the last hundred years. I am slipping into melodrama, but the rhino-rubbing-rocks of Loisaba are about to be brought back into service, and I am getting more confident that rhino-rubbing-rock by rhino-rubbing-rock the black rhino will recolonise more of Africa in time. The land remembers the black rhino, and I think that it too is happy to have them back.
Have a look at more photos from this safari.
Ninian
