Afternoon ride: Elephants

After lunch we went for our afternoon ride. The focus was elephants. Here in South Africa, they're simply called African elephants living in the savanna. The African elephant is the largest land animal, weighing up to 7 ton. Their large ears function as heat radiators so that warmth can escape from close to the brain on hot summer days. Just some last safety rules by Mpho and we were good to go: no talking or moving when around elephants. This means as soon as Mpho would spot an elephant, the group has to stop talking and stop the horses. The reason is quite simple: elephants will always indicate when they'd potentially want to charge by sending out signals. All guides get trained to read those signals, so must keep our voices down for them to concentrate. Mpho would then indicate if the situation is safe enough to continue and maybe even take pictures. Exciting, here we go!

Mpho was reaching out to his colleagues by walkie talkie to get know the closest location of the elephants. It was so nice to canter with the upcoming sun, scouting for elephants. Isn't this a dream? It didn't take long to spot our first elephant. Very often we encountered young teenager elephants (about 16-year old), because these "young boys" (as Mpho loves to call them) usually walk in front to play and to go on discovery. It's very unlikely they would charge, because they're scared themselves of us. However, the danger is adults at the back, potentially charging if we come to close, especially when there's mum's with baby elephants in the herd.

So, there we were standing as one group, admiring the herd of elephants in front of us. We truly felt like an army, staring at the enemy from a good distance with our leader Mpho in front of the group. Several times we saw big herds passing by, doing their own thing in nature. We truly felt blending in. We saw them eat, play and cuddle, almost like you felt a part of humanity in them. Mpho was allowing us to take several pictures and even pose with our horse on the picture. Some of our horses couldn't stand in front of the group, because they were too young and new to elephants, or because some horses where white and not blending in the savanna colours.

As we were in winter time, you could notice how scarce the grass was. It was incredible to see elephants eat whole bush branches with big spikes on them. They have very strong and thick mouth and intestine system, so that spikes don't harm the elephants internally and just come along with their faeces at the end of the day. Can you imagine these huge animals are just feeding just on plants? No wonder they have to eat up to 300kg of food per day.

We had two exciting events, with the "young boys" trying to run at us as if they would charge. Mpho was of course not scared at all, and was standing ground with his horse. He always asked the group not to move and to stay close together, as one pack. When the young boys would come to close, he would smash his hands on the lap, so that the cute elephants were already scared and ran away. The first time it was two young boys running at us, the second time just one young boy but a naughtier one. The young boy tried to "charge" several times, but Mpho taught us never to run away because these young elephants cannot be learned to scare away humans. They must learn that it's not OK to charge, and that we can be a danger for them as well. So Mpho had to yell and clap the hands harder, almost even grabbing his whip to scare him away. That situation was quite scary, because in the back we saw the whole group of elephants coming at us, because they felt like the young boy was in trouble. Then it was time for us to walk away slowly, to show we were not scared but still wanted to respect their space.

I would truly say this was one of the best and most exciting experiences of my life! We come so close to elephants, we truly felt the tension and excitement of mother earth's nature and we have been enjoying it every moment. Thank you, beautiful elephants!En savoir plus