Days 7 and 8

(Rhia’s comments are italicized)

After two days of only finding only bachelor elephants, we decided that our primary objective was to locate the herd(s). And wouldn’t you know it, our first find was … a bachelor elephant 🙄.

But he led us straight to some friends 😄

So the search continued. We used our noses to measure the freshness of  elephant dung. Our working theory was that the fresher, stinkier, and denser the piles of dung, the closer the herd. In reality, although elephants travel an average of 25 km a day, they can travel  up to 200 km in 24 hours!! This meant that those elusive herds could be anywhere!! But we were intrepid elephant trackers and were up to the challenge! So off we went and, soon enough, found…

This black mamba does not look or smell like an elephant, but is impressive in its size. I actually had a little bit of a nightmare as a result of encountering it. Black mambas are the deadliest snakes in Africa and can travel at 16 km/hr in short spurts! But good news…the books tell us that most humans could outrun them. Really??? Have these authors ever spent time with an arthritic, 66 year old?? A tortoise, I could probably outrun, but anything else could prove challenging!

We took a break during our quest to stop at the Pilanesberg Center, which is conveniently located in the center of Pilanesberg. After all, even intrepid elephant trackers have to eat! We usually pack a lunch for ourselves but decided to treat ourselves to a ‘pub’ style meal. I got the fish and chips: I’m not really sure what fish it was, but it still had its skin, and a couple bones. After lunch, we checked the animal location board and, lo and behold, some elephants had been sighted near one of the gates! So the intrepid elephant trackers have become resourceful, intrepid elephant trackers!

Our afternoon was spent with lots of smelly gooey poo, but no herd. We decided to start heading back toward the gate and got distracted by some fan favorites…

Then we saw a couple of flapping ears advancing through the brush right between the rhinos; and following those flapping ears were ‘flumps’ (Rhia coined this term as a substitute for elephants). Hold on a moment, I’m not sure I coined the term, though am perfectly happy to take the credit. But back to the flapping ears…

Elephant after elephant walked by us, and they kept coming! We had found our herd!!!

We counted 50 elephants but there may have been more. Something I’ve learned during my time in Africa is that there are always more animals in a herd than what you counted! These elephants were coming thick and fast…and close!

It took about an hour for the herd to cross, with one mom hurriedly  recrossing (with young in tow) because of a trumpeted alarm. The sheer number of elephants crossing around us was very exhilarating and we felt like exceptionally successful, intrepid, resourceful elephant trackers. (That last sentence reminds me of the children’s book called The Wonky Donkey; Google Scottish grandma reading The Wonky Donkey as she’s hilarious!)

On our drive out of the park, birds seemed to be the common theme!

The following day, I’m going to spoil the surprise, we found more herds of elephants. But first, and foremost, we discovered some first time animals (for us in this park).

Despite the plethora of baboons in Africa, we had not seen them in Pilanesberg until today.

And although it’s common to see hippos, seeing hippo babies playing isn’t as common!

And a Leopard Tortoise.

And a bug

But enough of the distractions. How about a herd of elephants on a hillside! I love this new camera!

Despite the good fortunes of the day, it was almost spoiled when I discovered that my phone had been taken from my pocket. 😡😢😓 But I had brought a spare phone just-in-case! Sadly, I am relegated to a 6 year old smartphone. The camera is lacking, but for everything else, it will work. I have learned a valuable lesson today and will be more vigilant in the future. No comment!

After the phone distraction, we returned to the park with about 3 hours left before sundown. Within 1 kilometer, we were stopped by none other than… FLUMPS!!!

We followed them all the way back to the gate we entered.

And then we got boxed in with  vehicles behind us and FLUMPS in front. We were unable to take pictures of how close the elephants passed, because we were on high alert, ready to make evasive maneuvers. I was a bit peeved with the cars behind us that had boxed us in as we had NO escape route; and the one thing you learn in game parks is to ALWAYS have an escape route. We had been put in a bit of a dangerous position and that made me uneasy…and especially when an adult male wandered into the herd , which made the adult females uneasy!!

I have never been that close to an elephant. They were almost brushing up against my door while my window was down 😲.

And then it was bye-bye flumps…for now.

So even though I experienced some material loss, it was outweighed by the memories gained. I’ve learned some valuable lessons