I might look gentle, but don't mess with me, or my tree.Elephants are rapidly becoming my favourite safari animal. I've always favoured the big cats, but they are disappointing and are eluding me time and again, whereas the elephants are always on hand to impress!
On Saturday we took a quick day trip up to the game reserve in Hluhluwe-Imfolowzi with some of the guys on the foundations team for Lionsraw. It was their only day off and they had to get up VERY early to set off up North. It was a long day, but well worth it.
The day was spoilt slightly by a couple of accidents on the road up, we didn't see them happen but we were pre-warned on the radio at 5am that there were 'bodies lying in the middle of the N2' and, this being Africa, no attempt had been made to shield passing motorists from the horror of the scene. That stretch of the N2, heading to the new airport, has always been a nightmare as locals from Kwa Mashu and Inanda rush across a busy 3 lane motorway to get to work and shop and back. This isn't the first time I've come across an accident there but to see dead bodies so early in the morning wasn't pleasant. And to top it off on the way home we passed yet another accident scene which was equally distressing. This is the reality of what happens here in Durban.
Anyway, back to happier thoughts. Elephants! The guidebook for the park tells you clearly to maintain a distance of more than 50m from any elephants, who look like gentle giants but can in fact be very aggressive and cause damage to one's vehicle. Sometimes it's not so easy to keep that distance though, as we discovered again this weekend.
We knew there were herds around as the road was strewn with bits of tree that had been pulled off as the elephants crossed, and all around one area of the park the grasses were trampled down. The most telling sign was the large amount of dung on the road and the smell of elephants! I don't know why you always think you'll see animals in the same area on subsequent visits, but we returned to the site of our elephant viewings a few months ago but there were none there, just a solitary baby crocodile sunning himself on the river bank. However, they weren't far away and it wasn't long before we came across a huge elephant bull near the road quietly munching a tree. There were gasps of appreciation from our guests in the back seat, who were experiencing the safari side of Africa for the first time.
I always think it's amazing that these beautiful creatures, who watch you whilst munching grasses and seem so placid and chilled out, can, in an instant, turn into crazy monsters who will turn your car over and stomp all over you. But it happens. Thankfully not to us. The first elephant did move closer towards us, but only because there was a tasty tree nearer to the road!
Moving on we saw a few more elephants, but the best one was a mother elephant. As we turned a corner there was a huge elephant right next to the road and at the very moment we turned up, she was wrenching the top off a tree and making quite a commotion about it. Angela, who was in the back, got a massive shock and squealed loudly! Further investigation revealed a whole family of baby elephants behind Mrs elephant. She wasn't in the mood for being messed with and moved herself very definitely in between us and the young, who weren't that bothered by our presence. Just to make sure that we didn't do anything to her family she then moved slightly closer and we moved our car on fairly fast at that point. We reversed slightly to see if she was just munching a tree but by this point Mummy elephant had had enough of us and all it took was one raised elephant paw/hoof/foot(??) to see us on our way! It's brilliant how these animals protect their young. I wouldn't want to be a lion trying to get one of those babies. Not with that attentive mother around. I'd stick to warthog.
As usual, we didn't see any big cats, but we did see many many zebra, impala, wildebeest, giraffe and the like and also this time a family of warthogs who stuck around to be photographed instead of scrambling off at the sight of the car. Strange sightings include a group of donkeys (not in the guidebook), a solitary vulture and a hyaena who ran across in front of the car. On every trip a mongoose or springhare darts out from the bush and in again inmmediately and this time was no exception. We saw the usual white rhino up close and we were blessed with a whole herd of buffalo crossing in front of us, within 5 minutes of getting into the park. So, all in all, a good day for animal spotting. But my ambition to see a leopard in the wild still remains unfulfilled, so that will have to be for another occasion.
