Elephants!!!!!

One of the main reasons I wanted to come to Botswana was to see elephants.  Already my first day in the bush we had seen several solitary bull elephants and Shabba gave me a brief commentary on elephant behavior. For example, they search out the most the tender leaves on trees, sometimes breaking the tree in half for access, other times uprooting the whole thing.  An elephant foraging in the bush is quite loud and you can hear one attacking a tree from quite a way off.  As a testament to the broad range of territory that elephants cover is the sheer amount of elephant dung EVERYWHERE; you cannot walk anywhere without stepping around decayed piles or relatively fresh deposits.  Since elephants do not digest everything they eat, undigested seeds and spores are littered all over the place, sprouting new life.  Elephants are a force of nature as they sweep through the landscape and are a huge part of the eco-system they exist within.

As the days went by we continued to see elephants scattered in the bush, moving solitarily or in groups of two or three, from tree to bush in the constant search for food that defines their lives.  We startled one elephant, standing near the trail we were using, and he mock charged the vehicle to scare us off. When Shabba revved the motor, however, the young bull backed away. Time after time we passed fields of dead broken and twisted trees, dotted with stumps sticking up like pegs in a pegboard, a landscape the result of lots of elephant traffic.  But the large herds remain elusive until day seven when we were transferring from Moremi to Chobe National Park.  I was super excited because in all of the reading that I had done, Chobe was the place to see elephants and was the part of the trip I had been looking forward to the most.  It did not disappoint!

Day seven was a super long day; we spent about ten hours in the car bouncing around on the wide sand highways that pass for roads in the bush.  The landscape changed drastically, opening to a wide savanna that looked 20km across but no elephants yet.  Around mid-day we reached the Savuti area at the southern end of the Chobe National Park.  The Savuti River, after 30 years of being dry, suddenly started flowing again in 2010 but after four years of providing reliable water, dried up once more in 2014.  As a result, there were only a few watering holes remaining in the area and we headed directly to them in search of animals.  The first two were empty, although we did see an ostrich ambling along in the bush between two spots, something that I never expected to see!  When we got to the final watering hole, however, we hit pay dirt—ELEPHANTS!

As we came around a sharp bend in the road to get to the final water hole we suddenly saw 60-70 elephants standing in and around the large pond. This particular body of water was kept filled by a solar powered pump, installed by the park rangers, to bring fresh water up from the water table.  Elephants are smart and they knew exactly where the fresh water was being deposited.  The bull elephants dominated that area, keeping a tight circle around the fresh pool of water and did not let anyone else approach.   Babies and young elephants in various sizes were frolicking in the water as they drank.

It was so amazing and entertaining that we decided to have lunch there, situated about 100 yards away under a tree.  It was the perfect place to park ourselves for a while.  As we sat there eating lunch, a steady stream of elephants emerged from the surrounding trees and bushes to get a drink and cool themselves off.  After mingling for a while they wandered back into the bush.  I really enjoyed just sitting there watching them.  But with four hours still to go to get to our destination, the Chobe Elephant Camp lodge, eventually we had to pack up and get back on the road.

We saw more elephants the next day on our evening game drive. As we were traveling down the track parallel to the river we spotted a family of 20 or ahead of us, crossing the road heading to the river. We immediately stopped as soon as we saw them.  Half of the single file parade had already crossed the road, but the rest were lagging.  Our sudden appearance startled one of the young bull elephants who ran a few steps away, then turned to face us flaring his ears and raising his trunk at us.  I think he was trying to decide whether to charge or not.  We sat quietly as those who had not yet crossed the road slowly munched their way closer, nibbling on the bushes lining the road, as they pursued one last snack before heading to get a drink. On some unknown signal they all decided to pass beyond us and walked a few yards behind us before crossing, steering well away from the Land Rover.  It is likely that they were protecting the several small babies and young elephants that were in the pack.

But the most amazing elephant day was on day nine, the last day of the safari.  We spend a majority of the day along the river and luckily for us so did the elephants.  We came upon hundreds and hundreds of them!!  Mid-morning Shabba pulled up to a rocky overhang with a view overlooking a section of beach fronting the river, promising us that this was a spot that elephants used regularly to get water about this time of day.  So we waited.  After about 20 minutes, sure enough the elephants began to arrive.  They arrived in small families, between 8-12 animals of varying sizes, per family.  They would walk slowly down the steep sand bank single file and first head to the very large mud hole alongside the river.  At the mudhole two or three at a time would step in and start using their trunks to fling the cooling mud over their large bodies.  It was a bit of a free for all as mud flew everywhere.  After finishing, the now very dusty and muddy elephants would head to the river to drink, and others would take a turn in the mud hole. It was all very organized.  Typically, two to three families would be at the river and as they left another group would come down the bank.  It was almost as if there was an invisible traffic cop somewhere in the background controlling the allowed capacity at the river. We sat there for 40 minutes watching this amazing, choreographed dance before deciding it was time to move on.

As we drove west along the track paralleling the river we passed some of the elephant families that had just been down at the river also moving west through the bush.  Numerous families were all moving roughly in straight lines by group in same direction.  As we travelled further along the river we discovered why when we came upon hundreds of elephants at another spot on the river.  We also saw hundreds more on the other side grazing on the adjacent plains on the Nambia side of the water.  Even more excitingly, we saw families in the middle of the river, swimming across. They held their trunks up in the air, out of the water to breathe when the water got too deep.  The babies were holding on to the mothers’ tails with their trunks, getting towed along like a float.  Shabba found us a place to park on the beach and we sat there for quite a while watching the constant stream of elephants leaving the bush to approach the river. Most passed right in front of us, within 20 yards and some behind us, some coming even closer.

As before the elephants traveled in small families and usually, the lead elephant gave us the stink eye as she passed but as we were silently sitting there only observing, she would dismiss us as a threat and led the rest of her group by.  It was amazing to see how many babies and young elephants were in the herds, many times comprising half of the group. The elephants, once reaching the river, engaged in either rolling in the mud holes or using their trunks to fling mud onto their backs and sides to cool off.  The younger elephants were quite gleefully, it seemed, throwing themselves in to the mud holes to roll around.  They were also chasing each other around.  After some time spent at the mud hole the families moved off to the west to cross the river.  It was again amazingly organized and I could hear the deep murmuring sounds that the elephants used to communicate as they moved from place to place.  A family would move to the mud hole, spend some time there, move away and another family would move in.  My guess was that there were 3-4 families at the mud hole at any given time.

I almost didn’t know where to look, there was so much going on around us. The sheer number of elephants in the area and on the move, on both sides of the river, was amazing and finally I realized my goal for the trip – to experience this exact moment.  There was one lone elephant off to the east side of the larger group who was constantly growling and rumbling.  We were not sure why she was so cranky—either as a general guard, because a boat had pulled up close to the bank where the elephants were making her nervous, or if she was serving as a traffic director of some kind.  It was astounding how many elephants were constantly streaming out of the bush.  We would think that the parade of elephants was over then all of sudden more would suddenly appear.  There were literally hundreds of them spread out along the river and across in the Namibian plains.  Awesome!!!!!