ELEPHANTS are big – really big – and when I get a bit too close to them, their XXX large size does tend to make me a tad nervous. Don’t get me wrong, I love ellies. And, as Bill and I have spent as much time in the bush as possible, it stands to reason that we have met and interacted with many of Mother Nature’s largest land mammals. I always find encounters with them to be infinitely fascinating but I do prefer to keep a reasonable space between them and me. It’s nothing personal. As I said, they really are big. For the last couple of weeks we’ve been doing a virtual stroll down memory lane. Before we finish up, I’d like to take you to some of southern Africa’s wonderful game parks to meet the more memorable pachyderm characters who have crossed our path. Most of them have been gentle, dignified, peace-loving giants but they can be delightfully playful, even downright silly and undignified at times. I am convinced they have a sense of humour.
So often we find our way blocked by a big ellie backside sticking out of the bushes into the road. As we wait patiently for the owner of the backside to finish his meal and move on, a queue of cars forming behind us, I swear that ellie is having a quiet little chuckle at our expense. An elephant researcher once told me about an elephant who used to ambush and chase cars – just for the fun of it. He never hurt anyone. Still, I’m glad I’ve never met up with him. When encountering elephants in a game park it is important to keep your distance and not invade their space, but I must say elephants don’t always abide by this rule. They are curious creatures and will sometimes stride over to take a closer look at you. These encounters can be intimidating but once I find I’ve actually survived them they leave me with a sense of wonder. Very occasionally we have met rather aggro pachyderm characters, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
As I said, it is best to keep your distance and to be alert for aggressive body language.
Some of the closest encounters we have had with elephants have been in Mana Pools National Park in the Zimbabwe side of the Zambezi Valley. If you’ve been there you will know about the almost spiritual quality of this African Eden. There is such an amazing sense of peace and oneness with nature and part of it is the ease in which the Mana ellies come and go, wandering through the camp, totally relaxed about the human invaders. In the early 1980s, soon after the park had reopened after the Zimbabwe bush war, we got to know Mazoe, an elephant named after a nearby citrus growing area. Mazoe developed a taste for the oranges many people brought into the park and he was quite forceful about getting his share. Eventually the authorities wisely banned visitors from bringing fruit into the park. We were camping at Mana with quite a large group of people, including a gaggle of young children, and we’d set up our tents in a circle. Elephants can be so silent and it was a dark night. We didn’t hear Mazoe or see him until he was stepping carefully over a rows of fishing rods and guy ropes into the centre of the camp.
Suddenly he was there, among us, calmly eating a bag of oranges, one of his hind feet right next to a tent, centimetres away from where a friend’s child was sleeping. I don’t think any of us took a breath as he finished his oranges. Then he shuffled backwards and reversed over the fishing rods and ropes, not disturbing or damaging a single one. That encounter really was a bit nerve-wracking and so was another Mana one, about 20 years later. Bill and I lay awake in our rooftop tent, keeping as still as possible, while an elephant plucked and ate the pods on the tree under which we’d parked our vehicle. He was there for about an hour before he gave a sort of elephant sigh and lumbered off. In the morning we noticed he had moved both the vehicle’s wing mirror.
From a spectator point of view, water and mud bring out the best in elephants.
They just love water and there is nothing more entertaining than watching a breeding herd with lots of youngsters at a water hole. They can spend hours swimming, splashing, wallowing, rolling and sliding in the mud or standing around socialising while enjoying an evening drink. One night on the bank of the Chobe River, we watched a big herd of mothers, teenagers and babies taking an evening bath. Eventually, the elephants started to wade out of the river and to congregate on the bank, ready to move off. Three of the younger elephants were still in the water, obviously dragging out their evening bath. They reminded me of human children, willfully ignoring grown-up instructions they did not want to hear.
And, like human children, they were having such fun in the water, splashing and squirting each other with their trunks and gambolling in the shallows. Some sterner command seemed to emanate from the herd. Two of the youngsters made a great show of not hearing, deliberately turning their backs on the grown-ups and splashing each other more vigorously. The third elephant, the smallest of the three, seemed more amenable to discipline than the other two little rascals. Very slowly, very reluctantly, he began to wade to the river bank. Every now and then he would stop and look wistfully over his shoulder, gazing at his two naughty companions, torn between obedience and the sheer delight of playing in the river after such a hot day. Then, just as he reached the shore, his yearning to be back with his friends overcame him. With leaps and bounds and great, joyous splashes, he rushed back to join them. The herd stopped moving forward and the adult elephants looked back at the frolicking youngsters. You could almost hear a communal maternal sigh. “Okay, but just five more minutes. Then it really is time for bed.”
One of the very best places to watch elephants in southern Africa must be Addo Elephant National Park.
You’d be very unlucky to go to this lovely reserve and not see plenty of them. We’ve spent hours watching them at waterholes, including the flood-lit one at the main camp, or keeping contented ellie families company as they grazed on the grassy plains. They are so placid, relaxed about cars and used to a human audience that you have to keep remembering that they are wild animals and that you need to keep your distance. We were reminded of this when we last visited this elephant haven. Travelling around the main section of the park our elephant sightings had been amazing. Huge breeding herds had assembled on the grassy plains and we’d joined lots of other nature lovers just sitting in our vehicles watching all the pachyderm action for hours at a time.
On our last day in the park we decided to explore the newer Colchester section. It was a pretty drive and by the time we reached the bottom gate, our turn-around point, we’d seen plenty of interesting flora and fauna. Heading back toward the main section, we were driving down an incline when we came across two big male elephants crossing the road ahead of us at the bottom of the dip. Seeing them we stopped our vehicle a fair distance away and switched off our engine, as did the driver of the vehicle behind us. Both of them seemed to be in a lively, happy mood and they almost danced across the road. We expected them to carry on into the roadside bush and continue on their way but they both stopped and looked at each other. Suddenly, quick as a flash, they moved forward, heading straight towards our vehicle. It was too late to start the vehicle and, with another vehicle right behind us, reversing wasn’t an option anyway. I froze. We both tried our best to stay calm as they side-stepped our vehicle and came to a standstill right next to the door on the driver side, inches away from where Bill was sitting, trying his best to look nonchalant.
They stood there silently studying us for what seemed like hours but was in fact probably less than a minute – then they continued on their way, strolling past our vehicle and the one behind us. It was an adrenalin charge of note, but still a magical experience. There is an ancient wisdom about these African giants that you sense very strongly whenever you have a close encounter with them.
All the same, that encounter was perhaps just a little too close for comfort.
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