Nice Elephants

One of the biggest things I noticed about the animals in Kruger NP was how used to humans and cars they were and this included the elephants, which after my earlier experiences with elephants was refreshing.  Not long after entering the park I drove over a hill and there on the road in front of me was an elephant.  After my experiences at SanWild I immediately shoved the car in reverse and was about to back off when I noticed that the elephant wasn’t even bothering to look at me, let alone give me any warnings.  As this road was the only one for many km, I slowly drove forward and the elephant totally ignored me.  I passed within about 5 m of it!  By the end of the day after seeing about 200 elephants, I was bit more blasé about them.  There are currently about 12 000 elephants in the park which they think may be too high to be sustainable but they are in the process of re-assessing this.

I am heading back into Kruger NP Thursday, and this time I will be camping in the northern end of the park and spending a couple of days exploring around there.

This was the first elephant that I saw in Kruger NP as I came over the rise.  At the time I thought it was special because I didn't realise how common they were in the Park.

The same elephant as above.  This is how close I stopped before driving past.

Another close elephant.

This herd was interesting, as they were all standing in a circle facing out.  Behaviour like this means that something is happening in tyhe middle of the herd (birth, deah etc) and the herd is protecting the individual.  Unfortunately I couldn't see what was going on but I like to imagine it was a birth!

I got very close to this old bull.  Take a look at his tusks, the left one is broken off about a foot from the tip, with the right one boken near the base.  They would be uge if they were whole.  I haven't seen any other elephants wuith two broken tusks like this, if only he could talk.

Part of a her crossing a road.  They were all covered n fresh mud.

Part of the same herd, but in this case he was covering his 'mud. with dust, then wiping himself down with clumps of grass.

Part of the same herd.  This was the only time I was warned away by a Kruger elephant (see the shaking head).

Just had to include this one as it is an elephant in the Oliphants River (Afrikaans for Elephant River).