The Relevance of Elephants

There are some days on safari where you just have a truly magical moment. It was one of those hot, stifling days where you worry you won’t see many animals because they’re hiding from the heat in the bushes, and you wish you could drive faster on the bumpy roads just to get some air flowing through the vehicle. But we were trundling along, spotting impala and kudu and having a good time anyway, when down the road ahead of us we spied an elephant- yay! As we got closer I started getting more and more excited- I know this elephant! His giant butt was impeding my view somewhat as he plodded down the road away from us, but I thought I caught a glimpse of some humungous tusks as he moved his head to feed, and I recognised Ezulwini, our local BFG. His name means “from heaven’ in Zulu and he’s probably the biggest elephant I’ve ever seen (not that I’ve gotten out of the vehicle to measure many of the elephants I’ve met in the past…) and his tusks are ridiculously huge. But my absolute favourite thing about him is just how beautifully relaxed he is. All the times I’ve seen him he is just unbelievably calm, will stand right next to the road feeding and carrying on about his important elephant business. And that is exactly what I love so much about wildlife viewing: when the animals just continue on feeding and socialising and grooming and snoozing and all of the other things that animals are busy with all day, you know that you aren’t bothering them at all. There is so much space in the Greater Kruger area that you know the individual animals could probably go their entire lives without being spotted by tourists if they really tried! Sure, there are roads they might have to cross or good spots to hunt or drink or sleep that might be close to people, but there is always the opportunity for them to avoid humans if they really wanted to. Hell, Ezulwini could walk from here in Balule all the way to Mozambique if the fancy struck him! But yeah, I really love the knowledge that our presence isn’t a hindrance to the normal lives of the wildlife that we’re viewing, they barely even notice the vehicle most of the time to be honest.

The other lovely thing about getting familiar with an area and its host of local wildlife is that you can learn the personalities of individuals. Because I know he’s an incredibly chilled out ellie, I knew that I could get pretty close to him without changing his behaviour at all. He completely ignored us and carried on feeding as we slowly approached. For the next 10/15 minutes we followed him down the road as he stopped to eat the occasional trunkful of grass, or a few leaves here and there from roadside bushes. After a few minutes he stopped eating and started heading off with a bit more of purpose down the road. I guessed he was heading to our waterhole, so we crept along behind him and, as he carried on down the road, I parked the vehicle in a nice position to view him if he came to the water, with the setting sun casting golden light over where he might stand. He stopped in the bushes just before the waters edge and looked like he might not come down, while we waited silently to see what he would do. Luckily, after a few minutes tense waiting, he ambled down a spit of mud in the dam to have a drink and splash about as we watched on, cameras clicking, as he cooled down a bit after a hot day.

Because it was around the time that we would normally have drinks I decided to have a bit more of an unorthodox drinks stop. I slowly opened my door, hoping not to disturb him, and snuck around to the back of the vehicle to get the drinks and snacks out. We sat in the vehicle having our little drinks break, passing the snack boxes around and enjoying our drinks like a kind of impromptu picnic. It felt a bit like when you were a kid and you went to the beach for the day but because it rained you had to sit in the car to eat your ham sandwiches and packet of crisps then turn around and go home. Only it was nothing like that because it was incredible and such a special moment. Sharing such an awesome snippet of his day before he disappeared back into the bush was a brilliant experience and I love that I could share it with my guests.

Elephants are such awesome animals. Even though it's often such a talking point that they cause a lot of destruction, pushing over trees and stripping off bark, chowing anything they can get their trunk on and whatnot, without them the environment and safari experience just wouldn't be the same