Monday 30 August, part one: safari part two

We woke up early to take a morning walking safari, just to increase our chances of seeing elephants. I woke up before the alarm to the not-so-distant sound of hippos burping, which is surprisingly peaceful first thing in the morning. Maybe it was just the context of being on safari in Central Africa that made their loud, rumbling, groaning noises so pleasant. Anyway, the walk was escorted by Danger, and also Lastone (pronounced Lah-stone, not Last One, but I can't help but notice the deeper implications of the spelling) who carried a rifle. Just in case.


We saw monkeys!


Tree of the day: sabistar. It flowers like this in the winter. The flowers are poisonous, which explains how they're so intact. They fall off and leaves grow during the rainy season into spring and summer.

And then we saw some elephants marching off in the distance!


Danger told us about being charged by an elephant. Shortly after he'd completed his training as a safari guide, he and a friend were out walking when they accidentally interrupted a parade of elephants by walking between the larger group and some straggler at the end. Straggler was not pleased. But this is what you do when an elephant charges (good to know): first, they will do a fake charge. This is to line themselves up with the enemy. Then, they back up. Once they start backing up, that sets the direction they'll charge in. They are too big to turn when running with all of that weight. So the enemy/victim-to-be should then step aside a few meters, because the elephant will not be able to tell such a small change, and will thus go ahead with the charge instead of taking the time to line up properly again. Danger said the elephant ran right past him. His friend thought he was dead though, and went back to the office and told everyone. They were all quite impressed when he showed up later.


me with Danger and Lastone

So after breakfast, we took a boat safari down the lovely Shire River. We saw quite a lot of animals, but it exciting was when we got pretty close to a large parade of elephants!



AND THEN LATER WE GOT REALLY CLOSE TO AN ELEPHANT WHO WAS ON THE SHORELINE HAVING A SNACK AND WE WERE MAYBE 10 FEET AWAY!!!



We watched in awe and took tons of pictures of her. We had actually be called over because a few people working in the office by the boat landing were looking for a bit of protection and the guards weren't coming fast enough. We picked them up in the boat and went back to watch her some more until some guards arrived, just in case the elephant wandered any closer to their office. It was really amazing though. She just chomped away at some leaves and didn't really mind us so much. She's such an incredible animal, it was so, so SO awesome to be able to get so close and just admire how beautiful and enormous she is!

We continued on. Saw many hippos sitting in the water. They can't actually swim, they are too heavy. They walk along the bottom. If they're "swimming" it means they're in too deep water and they're falling. They can hold their breath for six minutes though, which I guess is enough time to stroll back to higher ground.



So amazing. After lunch and settling the bill (surprisingly hard for a tourist destination-- they didn't seem to have a lot of cash to make change with, so it was quite an effort to make sure they were being square with us, though it did all work out in the end). With lunch came my Carlsberg Extra Special, which was not any more exciting than the Kuche Kuche flavor wise but a little bit stronger. We checked out, took a boat ride back across the river and were eventually met (late) by our driver, who managed to get us safely back to the village for the closing ceremony that afternoon...