Planet Baobab to Elephant Sands

After a rainy day yesterday, we managed to sleep dry under the bbq shelters of our campsite. We were all up early, had hot showers and when we came out of the bathrooms the sun was shining and our bags and clothes took no time to dry hanging outside. Luckily we were in no hurry to leave as we only had a short 200km drive to our next camp.
We left around 10am, stopped en route at the choppies supermarket where I spoke to the military guys about where we had been in our Toyota Fortuner and they were impressed about how far and where we had been and still not needed the winch.
Then it was back in the road in the 30°c heat to our resting place for the next couple of days.Elephant Sands.
This camp was going to be one of the highlights of the trip and as soon as we got there we could see why. Elephants were everywhere drinking from a huge watering hole and we pitched our tents right in front and had a panoramic ringside view. It is an amazing place and the only thing separating us from the elephants is a line of small stones.
Once pitched we all threw on our swimming gear and went over to the pool, bar and restaurant area, grabbed a cool beer and went for a swim with the elephants right in front of us, it’s an unbelievable feeling being so close.
The funny thing is elephants make absolutely no noise. They can walk past you silently, like they are on tip toe’s and until they are on top of you you’d never know they were there.
After a long cooling swim we went back to camp, had a few more drinks and Pieter made us his fillet steak with mashed potatoes and truffles for dinner and it was amazing. Just after dinner we saw impala racing across the campsite the other side of the watering hole and just as they went out of sight some campers at the other end of the field started shouting “Wilddogs,Wilddogs!!”and there they were, a whole pack of 10-15 Wilddogs chasing down the impala looking for a meal, but then they saw us. And for all us onlookers the Wilddogs stopped 50 meters away and stared at us and everyone with a camera, including me got the best photos of Wilddogs. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were.
The rest of the evening we sat around the fire watching huge elephants walk in and out of camp and as it got darker the huge looming shadows of elephants stopped right in front of us, lifting there trunks to sniff and check us out, at one point there were 2 that looked like they might charge at us but then a big older male came over and stood in front of them protecting us and telling the younger males that we were no threat. It was the most amazing evening, and as we all climbed in our tents we could hear elephants walking past until the early hours of the morning.Leer más