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When I put together the African Big 5 Safaris video, there were a few things left on the cutting room floor.  This little story, about a rhino encounter we had on Day Two, was one of them.

It happened right after our first cheetah sighting, on our way back to camp.  The gates close promptly at 5:30pm, so we were hustling to make it back in time.  When this herd of rhinos blocked our path, our guide, Marcel, started to fret.

The gate was closed when we eventually drove up (at exactly 5:39pm!)  Fortunately, we weren’t the only late ones, and we slipped in with the rest of the cars in line.  Even so, we were prepared with an excellent excuse: My photos’ timestamps proved that we had spent exactly nine minutes behind those rhinos!

The main reason I left this segment out of the original video was because the edit was already running long.  There were other, technical, hard-to-edit-around problems with this video, too.  Oksana and I were both shooting, but we’d framed essentially the same shots with our cameras.  Our exposures were wildly different, with hers over-compensating for the deepening twilight.  You’ll see when I have to jump-cut between them.  It’s like night and day; pretty jarring.

No worries, though.  Quality issues like that may have kept it out of the first Safari video’s final cut, but I’m much more lenient with our Postcard Valet “Extras!”

Notes
African Big 5 Safaris

Way back at the end of May, we embarked on a private safari of the Kruger National Park with African Big 5 Safaris.  I spent the following week working hard on editing the video and it’s since been an ordeal trying to get it online.  As you may have suspected, internet connectivity in rural Africa is slow and expensive (when it’s available at all.)  Livingstone, Zambia was the first city we came across since wrapping the edit that was big enough (and touristy enough) to have a worthwhile connection and it still took me three days to upload the 315MB video file to our website.

Yes, 315MB.  It’s a big one!

We had a fantastic time on this safari!  Really, I’m quite sure it’ll go down as one of the most memorable excursions on our year-long trip!  Because we had so many stories to tell and so much good footage to share, I couldn’t make myself trim anything else out.  The resulting video is almost 30 minutes long and, yes, I know, that’s a lot to ask from your typical internet audience.  All I can say is that Oksana and I have watched it quite a few times now and it still holds our attention.  I hope it’ll hold yours, too.

If the downloading is going slow, why don’t you let it buffer and click on over to African Big 5 Safaris’ website?  Browse around. We also have a tour review up on our Recommend Tours page. If you’re in the market for a safari in the Kruger National Park, you can’t do any better!  (And if you weren’t thinking of going on a safari before this, I trust the video will change your mind.)

Leave a comment to let us (and Marcel and Retief) know what you think!

Notes
African Big 5 Safaris
Kruger National Park
The Story of Duke
Our tour review of African Big 5 Safaris

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