Elephants..Finally!!

Date Written: 8/8

Today was a big day! We had a quiet morning because our lecturer had to go to another town for personal business (in South Africa that's a big deal, since towns can be hours away from each other). As usual we did bush work in the afternoon, a habitat assessment this time. We had been told that elephants had moved in to the area after a 5 week dry spell of not seeing any near Struwig Reserve. Our group went out pretty determined to see them either on our way to or from the work site. We saw a bunch of giraffe, zebra, and warthog on our way there, but no elephants.

 

(Warthogs, like Pumba!)

We did our bush work and headed back to camp and saw a lot of kudo and impala. Kudu are another type of ungulate out in the bush, but a lot larger than impala, and with cool horns and extremely good camouflage as well.

(Above is a male kudu)

Then, nearly 10 minutes away from camp, our driver slammed on the brakes of our pick up truck. We were all looking around to see what we had stopped for, and there, about 100 meters away from us on the opposite side of the river stood 2 young elephants. They were drinking water and playing. Even from far way they looked immense, only being about 5 years of age. Of course, the one day I think it's not worth it for me to bring my phone to take pictures is the first day we see them! We watched them for 5-10 minutes then they disappeared into the reeds. I'm so glad we finally go to see more than one elephant and I hope they will move closer to our side of the river during the rest of our time here!

Just when the day couldn't get any more interesting, a leopard showed up on the opposite bank of our river right before dinner. It was camouflaged so well against the trees and sand you could barely see it with binoculars. It's funny how I've now seen leopards more than I've seen elephants!

(That tan/yellow oval in the center is the leopard. This picture was taken with a camera through binoculars, so it was extremely difficult to see)

The first time was one night at bush camp after I had already written in my journal. The safety officer, Kevin, noticed movement outside of our electric fence, and we all got up to take a look and there less than 5o feet away was a leopard stalking amongst the trees and bush. It was a very dense area so the staff were very nervous, and had us go into our tents for a while, a time period we deemed 'leopard lockdown'. The rest of the evening we enjoyed and when we woke up the next morning the staff went out of the fence to take a look around and found a chewed up milk carton of ours! That means that leopard jumped into our camp to get it! From giraffes to leopards these fences really can't seem to keep anything out!

- Erin