Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Boat Safari, Elephant Charge and Smoking Dung

Sunrise on our boat safari.
Three grey herons, very similar to our blue herons.
A Cape Buffalo.
African pied wagtail singing.
The boat we were on.
A warthog.
An elephant charge...
Get out of here! (she is saying).
Spencer debriefing us.
Yolisa telling us the benefits of elephant dung.
and demonstrating how to smoke it.
Reading animal tracks...

Tuesday, April 25th.

We were up even earlier this morning, at 5, for a boat safari. We motored up and down the river looking for wildlife but didn’t see much other than a few birds, crocs, one hippo and a Cape buffalo, but it was relaxing and way less bumpy than the truck safaris. When we got back Paula divided us into small teams and had us play a game. She showed us 20 photos on her computer and we had to guess what the ISO setting was, what the shutter speed was, and what the aperture setting was. My team won thanks to Mads and Matt and no help from me. Matt said every team needed a cheerleader. Then we had lunch after which we had a science lecture on Amphibians led by Dylan. Then we went for our afternoon game drive. We had Spencer as our guide for the first time. He is a Canadian from Mississauga and has been here over a year. It was another bumpy hot drive and since it’s bird week we focused on them. After two hours we saw an elephant off to our right, right by the road and we stopped. She trumpeted at us, crashed through the bush to get ahead of us, and confronted us on the road. She was really upset by our presence as there was at least one very young elephant in the group. She trumpeted a couple more times and then bluff charged us several times. Spenser was very cool, talking softly to her, then yelling ‘hey’ when she charged. On the third charge he slapped his door and talked softly to her and she seemed to hesitate and back up. Spenser started the truck and slowly backed up and she seemed happy with that. After we managed to turn around and get to a safe distance, we had a chat. He was obviously shaken, and his adrenalin was racing. Spenser warned Yolisa the driver of another truck not to go that route and she came behind us. We stopped to look at some tracks which the guides were very excited to identify as aardvark tracks. Yolisa had all of us from both trucks get out as she showed us a large lump of dried elephant dung and what she wanted to show us. She lit it was a lighter and showed us how people used to smoke it while using it as a mosquito deterrent. Many of us, including me, tried it. It was like inhaling tobacco without the filter, nicotine or any high. But where else would you get the chance to try that, or even want to? By that time, it was getting dark and we needed to get back for dinner, so we split up and drove back to camp. On the way, Spenser was driving, talking on the walkie talkie and shining a torch into the wood looking for the tell-tale sign of lighted eyes, and he found a tree with 3 or 4 bushbabies jumping through the branches. He was very excited about that, as it was another rare sighting, but I found they were impossible to see let alone photograph. However, Timo got a couple of good shots. Then finally back to camp to hear that one of the other trucks was broken down in the dark in the reserve, so they had to go and rescue them. We had another good dinner after which Bruce and I went to the bar and had a couple of beer before bed.

1 comment:

  1. mmm..dried elephant dung! will you bring some back so we can try it too? Sounds like it was a pretty wonderful day.

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