Happy Taters day!
Ooh, wildlife encounters… Possibly my most excitin’ was, paradoxically, one where I didn’t even see the critter in question. “How can that be?” I hear you ask. Well…
When I was a little teenage nut, we went on a family holiday to Kenya (before it got all crazy there), on the cheap, as is normal for my family. This meant we didn’t go on an organised tour, we just rented an only slightly dodgy Jeep, and headed off with just my parents, me and the bro.
Mostly we just went to the smaller, less well known reserves. This is a massive advantage of the DIY approach, you’re not part of the horde, and if the animals have all decided 200 minibuses is just too many for a Monday morning and cleared off, and there’s nuttin’ there to see, you can go look elsewhere without having to work out an itinerary or worrying about being back in time for dinner or bed. The disadvantage is that you risk not having dinner, or a bed.
We did decide to have a day trip into the eeenormous reserve, the Maasai Mara, as the wildebeest were just starting the migration. Unfortunately, the only slightly dodgy Jeep picked that time to get a puncture, and of course the spare tyre was right at the bottom of the enormous pile of luggage so it was some hours before we were able to get it all sorted and repacked and back on out way, and it was starting to get a little late. We had passed a sign for a Safari Lodge a little way back, so headed up that way.
It was crazy $ per night, each.
Erk.
We didn’t have that.
What we did have was tents, however, and after it became obvious to the staff that crazy × 4 was not going to appear from my parents, they reluctantly admitted they *did* have a camp ground. We coughed up reasonable , and followed their directions to the camp site. It turned out to be some distance off in the bush, keeping the plebs a decent distance from the spenders of crazy $.
The campsite consisted of a clearing, featuring one small ring of stones, marking one fireplace, a tank full of water attached to a tap, and a lot of bushes. When we turned on the tap experimentally, a whole large dragonfly came out. This was somewhat more rustic than the lodge.
It was getting dark now, so there really wasn’t much we could do but stick up the tents and go for it. We build a fire, heated up some tinned beans or something, spent a happy half hour trying to catch the fireflies, then I went to bed. It was not the best sleep- I was woken up during the night by the sound of someone breaking wood at about 3 (according to my digital watch) muzzily wondered why my parents were still up and keeping the fire going, considered shouting and asking them, but remembered the bro was still asleep, so thought better of it and dozed back off.
At dawn, a few hours later I was awoken by a frantic mother whispering “THERE’S AN ELEPHANT IN THE CAMP, GET UP!!!” I’d never heard anyone whisper that many exclamation marks before, so I did as she suggested (unlike the bro, who spent several minutes mumbling that we’d seen loads of elephants yesterday, and he was sleeping).
It turns out the noise I heard in the night was not, in fact, my parents gathering wood, but a massive bull elephant pulling branches off trees, literally yards from the campsite. It had woken the parents as well, and they’d stuck their heads out the tent, seen it, and dived in the Jeep, which was right next to their tent. My tent, and the bro’s, were at the other side of the clearing and they decided the risk of startling him by getting out, running across the space fully visible and trying to wake us with Mr. Elephant right there was much greater than the risk of staying put and hoping he left soon. He did not leave soon, however: he spent the whole rest of the night wandering round the site with my bleary eyed parents watching from the Jeep. At one point, he went between mine and my bro’s tents- a space only a little wider than him, and pulled up a few grass clods. I found 'em next morning, less than a foot from where my head had been.
He wandered off at about dawn, at which point Mum woke me up.
Thus is the saga of how I got to be a foot away from the largest land animal on the planet- a wild African bull elephant, and didn’t even know it.
By the way, remind me never to post anything that long from my tablet again. I’m s’posed to be hading off camping in an elephant-free location today, and I’m running late again now.
I doubt I’ll be online again til next Sunday, so have a splendid week everyone! Remember the coasters, and don’t let any elephants up on the couch.
