PRIDE

Our plan was to fly home for Christmas in 2022, but than a new variant of COVID hit, so we cancelled our flight and stayed in South Africa, where we rented a car to travel around. On Christmas day we reached Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park. It was our second time to visit this Park, and we knew it has a high population of White Rhinos, all of them still wearing their horns. Unfortunately, the high prices of rhino horn make these animals very vulnerable to poachers and therefore many parks and reserves are nowadays dehorning their rhinos, to protect them from poachers. That’s why we were eager to capture a photograph of a rhino, that shows it with its horn, proud, strong, powerful. We drove around and managed to view quite a few of those majestic animals, but all of them were resting lazily in the mud to cool themselves. It was getting already quite late in the afternoon, clouds were starting to build up and the air started to cool down, when we saw some movement on one side of the car. We stopped and saw this beautiful rhino bull on top of a hill starting to move towards us. Quickly grabbing the camera, we managed to capture exactly what we were dreaming of – a portrait of a rhino, so strong and proud, and yet so vulnerable.