LordNigel's Travels - Animals of South Africa
Hello again, I joined Steemit for posting my story puzzle/ Interactive Fantasy Story
..but many people are asking me for more travel photo's as well :) I've received some advice that I need to provide more explanations and more photos (and I will do my best).
Please keep in mind, as you appreciate these posts, that I am a bit of reserved person (lone wolf type), I'm not the best with sharing or jazzing up my experiences - with me it's authentic stuff!. I do like to help and answer people, so feel free to comment, provide advice etc. I'm doing this for the viewers/readers of Steemit after all, so please feel unrestricted to let me know what you think/feel and what you'd like from these travel posts and I'll do my best to accommodate.
The travel posts so far:
LordNigel's Travels - Animals of Madagascar
LordNigel's Travels - Animals of Rinca Island
For the moment I'm jumping all over the planet and trying various themes (to see what people would like?). At the moment I'll stick with the wilds and the animal themes, as I like these most.
So without further delay, This time I dedicate this post to the Animals of Kruger in South Africa
No trip to South Africa is complete without Rhino's. This guy is a white rhino, you can see by the horn and flat rounded mouth.
These guys have bad eye sight, so you can get very close by just hiding behind a small tree. After a while they smell you and then... kindda run away (such beautiful creatures from a bygone era - make me think of miniature dino's :))
These guys rule!, what an experience and privilege to be out on foot and up so close, to these huge battleships of the African plains.
This is a mum and baby tortoise. Most of the babies don't make it and get crunched on by Hyena and other predators as their shells are soft while small (Note: the rifle is to scare off large animals/predators only - I am not a hunter! and it is rarely used to shoot in the air for protection only)
These Hyena guys are everywhere, cruising around looking for opportunities to crunch! look at those shiny teeth and big smiles!
So many cool animals, like this curious buffalo - again, give plenty of distance and they will be kind back.
Of course elephants are everywhere. These guys stomp the environment (Such majestic animals, always such kind eyes, if you ever get the chance to get up close to wild elephants,well..it's just wonderful!)
Look both ways before crossing the roads. This lioness has a few babies (Life is tough and both babies may not make it)
These guys are always trying to munch the tasty leaves. The plants have evolved to grow spikes. Doesn't stop them though, that's where their big tough tongues come in :)
It can be dangerous here at night. We spotted this guy one night! the growl sent shivers..These are true ultimate predators!
This concludes this episode of LordNigel's Travels
I can just pick another random themes for next time? or take requests, you never know I may have been there. I can also provide more photo's on any place already posted (I have 100's of photo's). I like interaction! so please let me know.
All the best
!steemitworldmap -24.367114 lat 31.596680 long LordNigel's Travels - Animals of South Africa d3scr
Great post! Thank you!
Wow!! Great post with amazing pictures, I like it. Awesome photography, I thouroughly enjoyed your post. Thanks for sharing this post.
Thanks for sharing. Are you actually a Lord?
Sadly no... just a guy who picked a strange Steemit name (and has no cash due to excessive travel :))
Well, hopefully you're richer for it (all those memories and experiences and life lessons), unless you get Alzheimers young and forget all your rich experiences, that would really suck on value for money for the travel!
:) this is why you take photo's to look back...also you could get hit by a bus tomorrow and what would you have then :(
To me life isn't about collecting things, saving money or spending it (rather find a balance in all things); it's more about experiencing things & not just saving up for my retirement one day... Also while I have my mind, if there is a chance (even if small/remote) to influence for positive change (which can't be done easy at home), I choose to use it now while I have it (traveling later with Alzhiemers - I'd have minimal chance to influence then :)).
Thanks for the thought provoking comment. I'd love to hear if others have views? ..Travel while young? or do your time and enjoy the cruise ships when older instead?
Cheers
And so hopefully besides your young Alzheimers your house doesn't also burn down with your photo print outs and hard-drives and because of the alzheimers you can't remember your password for your photos stored in the cloud.... Hmmm, I think you might be confident enough that that scenario doesn't play out!!!
Well it's interesting isn't it? It's the stereotypical worldview of the much maligned "millenials", who value experience over materiality.
But it's healthy to think from other perspectives.
But first of all from the millenial perspective. A lot of us really do think that some of the last generations were just so bloody selfish. They sold out on their youthly sixties hippy ideals and cashed in on consumerism and soul-selling. They over-saw the dismantling of progress on labour rights with centre and centre-right wing governments, and didn't seem to give too much of a bother for obvious in your face all out culminating global ecological crisis that is going to cause some major head-aches for many generations to come. For the most part they have the outright indecency to live much longer lives and not pass on their wealth to their children when it matters to them, sitting comfortably in their mansions that they have owned outright since they were in their twenties and criticising the children who are desperately getting by month to month in crappy rental accomodation with shitty landloards making life misery, while all the while the real value of money and of salaries is just dropping and dropping and is only just not causing all out riots because short-sighted mass production and externalisation of many environmental costs mean that even with the ever reducing real vlaue of salareis people can still put food on the table and buy a bunch of plastic junk for their kids at Christmas (although don't ask about their debt situation). We've all figured out how to download cheap/free self-help books that have made us realise just what a repressed unhappy bunch the last generation were... they worked miserable repetitive gruelling jobs, feel resentful for it and expect us to do the same thing they did... even though everyone is telling us most jobs will be replaced by robots in the near future anyway and the only possibility of having meaningful employment is to differentiate yourself from cold repetitive machinery by being a colourful creative human being. Instead of gladly grabbing the banner of psychological disarray and serious attachment disorders that have been passing down the generations no doubt since at least the industrial revolution when cuddles were suddenly out of fashion, millenials travel to "find themselves" (do you think Wally ever finds himself??) and try to reorder the psychological mess that they inherited from Victorianesque upbringings in the hopes that they can break the chain and perhaps raise some well-balanced attachment issue-free happy children who feel loved and secure in themselves. (okay so just in case it's not obvious I am being really quite toung in cheek here).
But then what are our children going to say about us? What a bunch of selfish pr&*^s, they rolled about wallowing in plastic consumerism, emitted way more of their fair share of carbon as they flew about the globe enjoying themselves and indulging in extinction tourism (making sure they gave the final nail to the climate change coffin that their parents had built), and then didn't even have the decency to make sure that they could look after themselves when they were older nevermind actually have something to pass on to their children to make their lives easier? The writing was on the wall that the government wasn't going to be able to look after them when they were older but they just barged on ahead and had a great big hedonistic party all their lives and then left it to their children to pay for their adult diapers and care for them because they couldn't afford a nursing homes and the government just said "well we did warn you!". They had the cheek to assign themselves the morally high position by pretending that they were actually "saving" the world as they traipsed about spewing out carbon. Yeah they might have attended a couple of protest marches, but maybe that was just for the social benefits of meeting like-minded people and massaging their ego a bit, but they never really had the courage to really make the difference, the real hard sacrifices, that was required to force some real meaningful change that might have made the world a truly better place.
These are imaginary potential perspectives of imaginary people. Just in case I get any attacks on this one! I have a bad habit of being playfully polemic but that sometimes backfires on the internet!
I can't pretend to understand the millenial perspective (as I am not experiencing it myself, I'm GenX)...but I'm happy to share mine and try to understand. Traveling, seeing the world & talking to people helps to educate me; at the same time this interaction influences others.
By virtue of simply existing on this planet we all consume (including the millenials). It's a hard thing to wrap you head around and actually accept that this is ok and not lose focus or hope (especially when everything you look/see/feel tells you things are getting worse). Take this msg I just typed, electricity burned, the earth got dug up to produce the parts in my computer. Am I hypocritical now to use it for this post? perhaps....maybe something else is also happening here, something not just about the ego (although at times can seem this way).
..some of the threatening things you mention like robots, automation and crypto (take steemit) could be looked at and used poorly, but actually can have the positive effect as well if used by people with good intent.
If a wall is in your way, you may feel dis-empowered to be able to move it - but what happens when you lean against the wall for others to see? My travel experience has taught me, you influence the world slightly more then if you did nothing.
Humans are creatures of comfort and habit, through small changes/gestures here and there (leaning against the wall) hope is coming back (and some millenials are leading the way).
When I travel it opens my mind through experiences. You simply can't get this by watching the tube or going to work or paying your taxes (sounds a bit like the matrix).
I'm happy to have a chat further if you'd like to PM me...is a bit broader/off the track from this post, which is simply for people to enjoy Africa animals :)
Well actually I agree with all you said. I like to sometimes explore the extremes of an issue in order to be able to return to the subtle complexities of the nuanced middle ground with a bit more caution. I think I might be GenX too, nothing wrong with a bit of hard graft, but also nothing wrong with exploring off the whole imaginative non-conventional routes that might have terrified our parents.
Re the hypocrisy of using a computer, breathing in air, moving a muscle etc. I think it's a really dangerous avenue to go down, a sort of "oh fuck it, I can't do anything without being a hypocrite then it's all or nothing". But it should be acknowledged that plane travel does emit an awful lot of carbon relatively, it can't be compared with the writing of an email. Plane travel is the elephant in the room. And I'm not spouting from an ivory tower, I very much struggle with the my own personal ethics on this issue as I also LOVE to travel.
how does one PM??? I haven't figured that one out yet.
Kate-m can you please contain the language my kid sister reads this. Do you drive a car? most of us do. The lasted research suggests while the emissions from a flight once a year are far greater then driving yourself around everyday, because they are delivered directly into the atmosphere the planet reacts in a different way (over 20 years the impact is way less). Taking a flight once a year is not impacting as much as driving your car or eating red meat daily! I think this is the point lordnigel is saying (your not going to stop people doing stuff that's bad to the environment overnight, but let's make a start by pushing against the wall (gently at first, or people will see you as radical) this will lead to technology advances (less omission flights, pc that uses less power etc.
PM means personal message, you can do via steemchat website.
I think it's amazing what you are doing. We all need to enjoy life in nature more, so we can learn to appreciate this wonderful world with all her beautiful, amazing creatures. Keep travelling, keep taking these beautiful photo's and show the world what beauty is out there. It is so easy to get lost in the negative, we need to open our eyes and see the positive.
That was a really great trip. You have seen so many animals. I bet it is amazing experience to see them in the wild, where they are supposed to be anyway :)
..Was fantastic, nothing better for me then to see animals in the wild (whats left of it) - all trips are absolutely worth it and I recommend it. Now that I know people like you, enjoy the photo's and reading along, I will keep sharing more. Thank you for your comment.
You are welcome :) Keep posting (:
So many majestic creatures in one trip!
I can't imagine how being so close those rhinos feels. Great photos man!
The buffalo pic is my personal fav.
Cheers, was a great trip! Rhino's rule
Such amazing photos! such wonderful animals! Recently I read on the Internet how poachers killed a pregnant female rhino with a cub. I cried. So horrible that some people are ready to destroy rare species of animals for the sake of money.
Thanks for your comment, this is a sad thing. Sometimes people do silly things, but sleep at night by justifying it as right in their own minds. I don't know how to stop it,because the reasons are not straight forward, but surely spreading the word how fantastic creatures are (alive) will help a little.
I hope I could write a travel blog too. Haha! Some members here put longtitude/latitude below their post to be included in SteemitWorldMap (???)
Good stuff, you should write as well! thankyou for the reminder, I have added to Steemitworldmap. Cheers
These are some incredible pictures! I loved it! It does look like the Hyena is smiling. ;) Amazing pictures. Loved it! Thanks for sharing.
Cheers - they look like they are laughing and chatting when two or more meet (they are a personal favorite, so plenty more photos in future blogs :))
I'm sure they do. I will look forward to seeing more of them.
Great photos. Were you on a special safari? You managed to get quite cose to the wild animals.
Yeah it was!. I don't tend to do normal tourist stuff. This one was on foot with local trackers. You say what you want to see, they find the footprints and you go track that animal down. Always go with a local expert, they will tell you how close to go etc. Keeping in mind, these are still as wild as you can get.
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I don't tend to do the "normal" touristy things either. Its more fun that way. This sounds like quite an adventure.
What a magical post! I love all the animals! You took amazing shots. Thank you for sharing!