For the Freedom Day Bank Holiday, we went up to Hluhluwe Game Reserve for a spot of safari. Steve's friends Jo and Chris were visiting from the UK and had never been to a Game reserve so it was a good opportunity to go.
As ever, my goal is to spot some big cats - lion, leopard or cheetah, I'm not fussed.
As usual, they were nowhere to be seen.
However, this particular trip was a good one for elephants. After the first hour of driving and seeing nothing, just as we were starting to get a bit disheartened, we turned the corner into one of the loop roads and came across a whole herd of elephants, big and small, about to cross the road in front of us.
Elephants are the most dangerous of the animals in the park, as there are more of them than big cats and they can turn your car over if they feel like it. The advice is to stay at least 50m away from them and not to annoy them. We were a bit close, and the car in front of us was closer still, and one of the big elephants was not too happy about us being here and made clear signs to stay put or back off to allow his family to cross. We were only too happy to oblige!
After that family had crossed and many photos had been snapped, we continued on to find another 2 herds of elephant wandering around the same area. A truly magnificent sight! Elephants are so big and so gentle looking, munching their way through the trees. They can run extremely fast if they decide to do so though and we didn't want to test them on that.
Further on, and back up the hillside, we looked down over that area to see a very large elephant completely blocking the little bridge that we'd crossed earlier, preventing any cars from proceeding. What those people couldn't see was that round the corner another herd was wandering up the middle of the road, maybe they got fed up of fighting with trees and fancied something firmer underfoot. It was fascinating to see the behaviour of these creatures, and to admire the way they watch out for each other.
Several hours later, and having seen lots of rhino, zebra, giraffe and warthog, but sadly no cats, we were losing light fast and headed for the exit. On the way out we passed an even larger elephant enjoying a feed on a little tree. This finished our elephant-tastic day off nicely!
