I will now proceed to embarrass myself and National Geographic by posting some holiday snaps of South African wildlife that are nowhere near as good as the kind of shots that typically grace the legendary yellow rectangle. The baby rhino above is not impressed. Be gentler, kind readers. Be gentler.

First off, white rhinos. This seems appropriate: it was World Rhino Day while I was away, and I came home to learn that a record number of South African white rhinos had been killed by poachers in 2012. With heart-breaking predictions that the whites may be extinct in the wild within the next decade, I feel exceptionally grateful to have seen the individuals that I did.

A lone male.

The baby rhino