Sometimes you go to the elephants - other times...

Trip Start Jul 16, 2004
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Trip End Aug 01, 2004


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Where I stayed
Xunaga lodge
(Gaborone hotels)

Flag of Botswana  ,
Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Sometimes you go to the elephants, other times they come to you. This afternoon just after I left you, a call went up for us all to grab our stuff and get "saddled up". A herd of maybe thirty or so elephant was meandering through the brush not 100 yards from camp. It may seem like it would have been fun to just walk over to them and say hi, but, of course to just go walking up to several dozen elephant wouldn't have been prudent. So we "saddled up" and set up a position nearby to quietly watch them feeding and interacting with each other. As we stood in the trucks, so many heads sticking out of the tops of the Land Cruisers, the elephants made a slow procession by us. We stood quietly observing and as long as the Matriarch wasn't too concerned with us, no one else was either. After all, an elephant has to stay busy feeding to get their three or four hundred pounds of roughage they require every day. Apparently an elephant will spend eighteen hours a day feeding and only twenty minutes or so sleeping - imagine, a power nap every day and you're fine; the flip side spending most of the rest of your day eating. There was one young juvenile elephant that stopped near our trucks, lifted his trunk at us (smelling us) and did a little shake of his head while stomping his feet a bit. After a minute or two he moved on with the others in search of more to eat. Alwyn explained he was probably just trying to show his mom and aunts that he was a tough guy.

Elephants are fascinating to watch. Their movements are very deliberate, almost in slow motion. To stand and watch them moving through the mopane woodland in the warm afternoon sun is meditative.

After about forty minutes we moved off to continue our game drive. We came across some giraffe and another group of elephants a few miles down the trail. This herd of elephants was much more skittish than the ones near our camp. Even though we stayed well away from them, a mile or more, Alwyn could tell that they were aware of us and weren't comfortable. It looked as if some mothers were being extremely protective of their young. We left them alone. I wondered if this group may have been the same group that Alwyn had heard in distress this morning, and he said that it probably was. They obviously weren't having a good day.

Our evening game drive was capped off with another sighting of the same pride of lions we saw this morning. Once again sauntering right in between our trucks and paying us no mind whatsoever. No sound but the clicks of shutters. I'd almost expect one of the lions to stop and ask for a model release. But that's just silly.

On the drive in we stopped to admire the sun setting over a lagoon, a heron silhouetted against the orange glow. I can tell I'm really going to like the sunsets here out in the bush.

Tomorrow we have a morning game drive and then get a boat to go up-river for two nights on the Okavango Delta at the Xunaga Lodge.

I'm going to sign off for now as I'm not feeling all that well; a little nauseous and headache-y. I took my malaria medication after lunch this afternoon, and during the game drive started to get the queasy stomach. Now I feel like what I've read it feels like when you start to have malaria. Maybe my little pills are actually malaria-in-a box instead of malaria-cure-in-a-box. (I don't really think I've got malaria, I haven't really had a chance to contract it yet, and I'm sure I'd really feel worse than I do now... No worries!)

Alwyn suggests that there is little chance of anyone contracting malaria. He's never taken anything for it and for all his years in the bush has never contracted it. I think I may stop taking the pills and see what happens. If I get malaria, I'll just start taking them again.

Anyway, it's all part of the adventure. Though I do look forward to a good nights sleep.

More tomorrow.
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