My Visit to Etosha National Park (continued)

Yesterday I mentioned that I visited Etosha National Park in northern Namibia during my camping trip and was fortunate enough to see lions, leopards and cheetahs.  Since I took several great pictures while I was in Etosha I wanted to follow up on my visit a little more.

Anyone who has done a safari has almost certainly seen a giraffe.  I have TONS of shots of giraffes.  BUT, I have never gotten a picture of a giraffe drinking.  And as you can see here, it is a bit of a process as the giraffe must bend its back legs while straddling on his front legs.  This is actually a very dangerous position for the giraffe to be in as he has no peripheral vision, so this stance leaves him vulnerable to predators:

We also saw two impala fighting:

And then there was an elephant taking a bath in some rainwater which was sitting in the middle of the road:

One of the best spots of the day was a black rhino.  We only saw two rhinoceros in the park because they are THAT rare.  There are only about 4,000 rhinos in Africa, but that is a figure from 2008.  Most countries won’t publish their actual rhino numbers because that encourages poachers.  Most people think that elephant poaching in Africa is the problem, but in reality, rhino poaching is much worse.  Poachers hunt the rhino because of their horns.  The typical rhino horn goes for about $50,000 for 1 kilo, with most horns averaging about 8 kilos in total.  Some countries have begun de-horning their rhinos in order to make them less attractive to poachers.  But the horns grow back at a rate of about 8 centimeters a year, and the de-horning process is quite expensive.  Namibia has no plans to de-horn its rhinos for now, but that may change in the future.  Here was the rhino I spotted: