There is no fence around Rhulani Safari Lodge, just an electric wire. By this we literally have no limits to nature. Thus, it may happen that all kinds of wild animals pass through the lodge, from a small turtoise to a giant elephant, like Bob. This is an unforgettable experience for our guests and a headache for our management.

Bob is our most frequent and loyal guest. Especially in dry winter season, he visits us literally every day. He has no official register with us and does not even pay the bill. But everybody knows him and so we gave him a name. “Welcome to Rhulani, Bob!”

Here, he comes. Like a trained circus elephant, Bob overcomes the electric wire, slowly slowly, just one leg at a time. On other days, he lifts the fence stakes with his white tusks and then just walks in. Very intelligent. Rhulani's guests are speechless: “Wow!” Bob walks now through the lodge. He must feel like a rock star. Everyone is following this massive bull and takes pictures. The clean pathways in the chic five star lodge get littered by large, round elephant dung. But of course, this is generously forgiven by the guests, or let’s say, Bob’s “fanclub”.

The presence of a rock star often causes a headache for the hosts. That's also the case with Bob. Rhulani's Manager Gerda is worried: "Oh my God, hopefully nothing happens". Often the fans forget that Bob is not a rock star, but a wild animal, and even worse, one of the dangerous "Big 5". Actually, our management wants to get Bob out as quickly as possible. With all our love to Bob, but safety and damage limitation come first. Our rangers scare Bob, with loud drums, shouting, and throwing stones at him. Bob moves slowly. Maybe he feels even flattered by the attention in lodge?

For Rhulani the potential damage of Bob’s presence is considerable. We remember that evening, when somewhere in the backyards he tracked a water pipe and dug it out. Our guests were enjoying dinner, when all our water tanks emptied within minutes. There was not a single drop left when our guest went to sleep. No shower and no flushing of the toilet until the next morning, when finally the leak was found and the pipe replaced.

Normally Bob drinks the water from the plunge pool of our guests. He seems to even like the chlorine. "It happens that in an emergency situation we have to call a truck, which provides us with thousands of liters of water to fill our tanks and pools again," says Gerda. An expensive thing, and not covered under insurance. The pumps of the boreholes are not working fast enough. After years of prolonged drought every drop of water is a precious commodity in Madikwe. For Rhulani, our staff, our guests, but also for Bob and thousands of animals in the reserve.

Bob usually leaves a trail of destruction: broken trees, split stone slabs, fallen pots. For understandable reasons, Rhulani has no garden with beautiful and expensive plants. But when the rock star has left, we have to clean up everything for his next show. So far we have successfully managed to limit the damage caused by Bob. Our wooden patio decks are so far safe, which is a surprise as there are marula trees, whose fruits taste particularly good.

Besides the effort to minimize damage, not many ideas to cope with this challenge have come up so far. Should we build a fence, as other lodges so? No way! It would destroy the unique merger with nature and the special "Rhulani Feeling". At the end we believe that we are here in the beautiful nature accepted as a guest, and we therefore treat the animal kingdom with respect. So we just hope every night that rain, and much rain, will start to fall, so that Bob will find elsewhere enough water, and the situation will be resolved automatically.

Bob is just one example of animals that visit Rhulani, on a desperate search for water. We also see buffalo, zebras, kudus, klipspringers, giraffes, impalas, warthogs, tortoises, scrub hares, baboons, snakes, and much more. We always ask our guests to keep the eyes open, and to move in the dark only accompanied by the ranger. Taking into account our rules, Bob’s fanclub is actually very safe abd can fully enjoy his presence.