It was with some apprehension that we met the other three couples who we were joining, not knowing whether we would all gel as a group. There was no need to worry – and why should there be, as we were all doing the trail because we shared a similar love of the wild.

Arriving at the camp from Pretoriuskop after a ~30 minute drive we were greeted by many vultures feeding on a carcass of a kudu bull that had been killed by hyena some hours before. If this was the start we wondered about what other excitement lay ahead!

Firstly, and a most pressing problem right now, is the belief that rhino horn is an aphrodisiac. It is exactly for this reason that we are experiencing an unprecedented amount of rhino poaching all throughout southern Africa. Yet most of us know that rhino horn has no such properties as it is simply compressed hair, with exactly the same chemical composition as toe nails. Rhino horn is keratin, a protein common to the skin and outgrowths from the skin of all mammals, and we all know that chewing one’s nails is no aphrodisiac!