Journey to Elephant Sands

I woke up to a chorus of bird song and hippos calling out on the nearby river. A myriad of animals, insects and birds were stirring with the imminent sunrise. I got up in the twilight and got a shower in a black beetle filled shower. As I left the shower I was faced with a large troop of baboons with a big, intimidating male in front of me. Fortunately, he moved aside as I walked forward to my tent. We had a light breakfast as another family of warthogs skirted us waiting to eat any scraps we left behind. It was time to leave this magical realm of life and head out onto the road for our next destination. We travelled through a huge wildlife park filled with low trees and grasses for as far as the eye could see. We passed dozens of elephants, some very large males with long white tusks, near the road and sometimes stopped the truck to view them more closely. It was special to see them feeding in the grasses by the trees. We stopped to watch a group of four large giraffe lolloping over to trees with their graceful gait and stretch up their long necks to feed on the high leaves. We also passed a group of five large Ostrich as well as occasional antelope. I reflected that I would never tire of seeing these animals in the wild and would always feel the same thrill of anticipation and discovery when in wild Africa.
We travelled on and at a certain point the countryside changed dramatically to tree-less grasslands which a fellow traveller informed me was the edge of the Kalahari desert. We eventually turned off the road onto the aptly named 'Elephant Sands' which was a campsite situated in sandy scrubland with a water hole, often visited by elephants and other animals, at its centre. After pitching my tent on the sand I watched the busy bird life with two horn bills jumping up and down to a cleft in a tree where you could hear the chicks calling for more food. The designated cook group made us a tasty lunch of tuna, apple, walnut and raisin salad. We then rested in the shade of the bar out of the blazing hot sunshine and talked of politics and other various topics before eating a dinner of curry and rice facing a beautiful reddening sunset on the horizon. Sadly, the hoped for elephants never arrived at the watering hole, but we considered that we had already been very fortunate with our animal sightings on our journey and could therefore tolerate this minor disappointment. The red dusk settled into darkness and the sky filled with southern hemisphere stars as I slowly fell to sleep.Read more