Last week when I went animal spotting in Pilanesberg National Park ,about four hours in we drove over a ridge and saw our second rhinoceros of the day. Far off in the bushes. With a tiny baby rhino behind her.

I spent about 20 minutes trying to get a clear shot, and this is the best one of the bunch. See the tiny grey rock on the right, behind the big grey rock on the left? Baby rhino.

You never, ever, ever get out of the car in a national park full of wild animals in Africa.

Charmaine very nicely suggested that I may want to hang out of the passenger window and lean on the roof, with my feet on the seat, to try to get a better shot. I was very glad to have spent some time doing situps in the gym because this is the position I struck for 10 minutes or so, trying to get my shot.

Eventually, we decided that we would have to just leave it and drive on…

So, five minutes later.  About 1 km down the road. This pair crossed right in front of the car..

And.. in the next half hour we saw another two rhinos, making it seven in the whole day.

Thing is, if we hadn’t spent the twenty minutes or so trying to photograph the first mum and bub pair, then we would not have been in the right place at the right time to see the second pair so clearly.

Just when we had concluded that all our efforts were fruitless, exactly what we had wanted was in front of us – but if we hadn’t spent all that time trying then we wouldn’t have had the opportunity.

Or – random stuff happens all the time and often it’s lovely…