That’s what really touched me…

We were  about an hour into our drive. It was going to be a bush lunch day and even though it was chilly to start with, ( I could tell by what hat Elisse would wear!! ) his woolly hat, I knew that in the blink of an eye, the heat would well up to burning point. He switched to his battered leather safari hat then.

The horizontal dust was part and parcel of the journey but ironically was horrendous if we passed another vehicle. Human interference , I thought, but I was part of it.

The rules were clear, no night driving, no getting out of the vehicle except at the few designated picnic areas and no going off the track.

We were approaching a part of a really twisting and turning meandering river, and there they were. At least 50 elephants.

Amazing statuesque, our biggest land mammal. Somehow the families had communicated with each other and they had all turned up this morning at this particular spot….to drink and play and eat.  I had really not just come here to identify different animals and tick some sort of box…I had wanted to spend a little time seeing their real and natural behaviour in the wild. And here it was… under a tree a group of 4 teenage males having their ‘gap year’ from their birth families, were stroking and cuddling each other under an acacia tree. One had only half a trunk but was stroked and cuddled by his smaller brother. The little bull was left handed….his left tusk was shorter. He jostled and playfully pushed his brother under the branches until he got hungry. They eat tons of vegetation a day and it keeps the savannah a grassland instead of a jungle….when suddenly I noticed he had ripped off a rather large woody branch. Certainly too big for his mouth.  The Acacia leaves are tiny and juicy but the stems are riddled with spiny needles.  They are too sharp for me to pick but just not a problem for little jumbo.

I watched as he lowered it delicately to the floor, placed his left big foot on the end to secure it and then delicately used his trunk to swipe the branch clean!!! Amazing. Spines were no trouble to him….

I just  stood upright in the car watching these colossal creatures nod and acknowledge each other, mothers with their babies and old bulls…..how did they tell each other where to meet ,how did they know? Apparantly it was not a regular meet in this spot…

And then at almost the same time the whole group,splintered off walking in their own directions away from the water. I have so much to learn but that wasn’t the only thing that day!!!