Our favourite drive while in the northern Kruger National Park is the Mphongolo Loop (S56) that goes between Shingwedzi Rest Camp and Babalala Picnic Site It is about 30 km and, as its name indicates, follows the Mphongolo River, a major tributary of the Shingwedzi.
The road passes through various habitats where different wildlife can be found. In some places the river does not have any surface water (although it may still run under the sand) while in others, particularly when the terrain becomes hillier, water accumulates in waterholes that attract good amount of wildlife.
Below is what we found in one of these river bends that I believe was the Ribye waterhole.
A picture of the view:
We stopped the car and watched, enjoying the moment. After a while, we noted that we have missed some other beasts that were also present, apart from the crocodiles…
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The above picture should help…
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However, the following will leave no doubts…
At some stage, while entertained watching the action in the water edge closer to us, a movement caught our eyes in the rocks further away. We saw a flash of pink and realized that the rocks were in fact a pod of hippo. They had been there all the time, lying quietly enjoying the sunshine and too lazy to move to the point that their exposed bodies were dry!
The waterhole at Punda María Rest Camp, in the Kruger National Park, is a great way of enjoying a sundowner while watching the elephant activities and, with luck other night animals as well.
Among many elephants, one appeared to have a kink in its trunk.
Unsure of the reason, we waited for a long while until it got closer and we could have agood look at it.
It was clear to us that unfortunately the animal had been sneared and luckily for it, although injured, it managed to break free before more severe, probably lethal damage was done.
Although when sucking in water it leaked some, judging by the size of the animal, it had adjusted to its injury and managed to live a fairly normal life.
However, the sight was a grim reminder of the horrors of poaching.
We went for a visit to the United Nations Headquarters (UN HQs) in New York and, after visiting the building we went to admire the sight and scent of the roses at the garden and the view. Then it happened. Our trained eyes spotted a large elephant among the bushes and then they opened wide when it started moving towards us! Immediately, King Kong came to mind…
Well, that start for the post was only to attract the readers’ attention!
However, a life size of a bull elephant does exist and it stands at the UN HQs. It is a bronze cast donated jointly by Kenya, Namibia, and Nepal. Although it seems logical to me that Kenya and Namibia would do such a thing, Nepal was more surprising. However, I should have known that the country has over 200 wild elephants and another 250 captive ones (1). In addition, Nepal has a “wildlife diplomacy” an important part of the country’s soft-power foreign policy (2).
Mihail Simeonov (3) hatched the rather outlandish idea of casting a sleeping elephant in Africa and the account of the events that followed is based on his publication (4).
About 1978, he created the Cast the Sleeping Elephant Trust. The founding document explores “…the philosophical and practical implications of man’s dominance over Nature and the need to readdress and to completely rethink that link to Nature.” The interested reader can find more information in Mihail´s publication.
For the next couple of years, until the cast was actually made on 19 March 1980, Mihail gradually managed to get Kenya´s permission to do the job there. Subsequently, he convinced Kelco, a division of the Merck Corporation, to donate one thousand pounds of alginate, the paste used by dentists to prepare teeth moulds amonmg other medical uses. This was important as other cast methods were not suitable for various reasons and Mihail did not wish to harm the animal.
After overcoming several other issues, Mihail travelled to Kenya where, with Kenyan government support, a suitable wild bull was found at Ol Pejeta (5) and tranquilized. After 2 hours of 20 people working, the cast was completed and the elephant walked away unharmed.
After 5 more years the work was completed and the plaster version exhibited at a gallery in New York. Finally, in 1986, Kenya agreed to donate it to the United Nations. Namibia joined Kenya two hours after its independence and, later, Nepal also agreed to join in.
A number of proclamations from the author and the donor governments on the right for the elephants to exist for eternity ensued and the bronze elephant weighing over 3 tonnes was finally completed at a foundry in NY and, after considering other options, transported by flat bed truck to the UN HQs to be finally placed at the northwest corner of the North Garden.
But there was a snag: the size of the elephant penis!
This subject was treated at a meeting of the Secretariat on 17 November 1998, just one day before it was going to be unveiled. A senior official was worried about the size of the penis and its possible negative impact on children visiting the UN so, eventually, after abandoning the idea of plastic surgery on the offending part, it was decided to dissimulate it by planting bushes around the statue to hide it from view! This work actually ended minutes before its inauguration by SG Kofi Annan on 18 November (6), more than 28 years after the casting took place.
First sighting.Bushes have grown by now.A view of the offending part.
Our plane to Lusaka was leaving at 11am so we got up early to prepare for the return journey. We needed to get back to Kasaba Bay, so we all got on the double cab, babies, toddlers, and nannies inside and adults at the back. We got there in good time and, after saying our farewells, we joined other passengers at the thatch-roofed wall-less terminal to wait for our Zambia Airways plane to arrive.
The crowd included our former companions from Ndole Bay that, I must say, looked more strained than us! We still had not forgotten that they had nicked some of our fish, so we just gave each other disdainful looks! We focused on entertaining our children during the wait.
Soon we heard the plane arriving and we got ready to board and queued with the rest, trying to get to the front of the line on account of our youngsters. While we were moving, we were approached by a visibly mortified Zambia Airways staff that informed us that there had been a problem and we were not on the flight!
The news left us shocked and speechless as we could not understand what had happened. The plane looked the same as the one that brought us seven days earlier so we did not comprehend where the ten extra people came from, unless there were members of the President´s entourage left behind? We did not enquire about their origin so we will never know what created “the problem”.
One more week at Kasaba Bay was not in our plans as we needed to go back to our project and, at the time, I was the Organization’s Representative in the country as well! We all used our strongest arguments such as “We cannot be left here with our babies” “It’s got to be a mistake” “We have confirmed flights” “We must go back to our work!” but none had the desired effect. We were grounded and told to move aside while the other passengers boarded. I thought I saw our former co-hosts at Ndole Bay board with a smirk, or perhaps I just imagined it…
The airline representative also told us that we would be accommodated at Kasaba Bay lodge with all costs met by Zambia Airways. When we asked when we would get another flight back, he said: “the next scheduled flight is next week, but please, do not worry, they are working on another plane to come to fetch you all tomorrow” and then added “keep checking with the control tower here for news”. The next thing we saw was his back while boarding the plane. The door was shut, and we were on our own! We looked around for the control tower, but we only saw a small room with a radio adjacent to the thatched terminal. Rather frustrated, we decided to tackle them later!
It was a beaten group that arrived at the lodge to spend the night. We did not know how many days we would be there! Luckily, the presidential party had vacated all the rooms and we were among the few guests present. We were taken to our chalets, settled down and, slowly, the importance of the bad experience started to fade as we realized that we were still at a nice place, we had food for our children and the lodge would provide for us free of charge. “Not too bad” I thought, trying to look at the bright side.
After a while, we decided to explore our surrounds. The lodge consisted of a large block with a reception and lobby areas and an adjacent dining area and kitchen. Guests stayed in chalets that were lined up at about fifty metres from the water edge with a view of the lake and its hazy mountainous frame. The lodge grounds were well kept, and it was clear that some work had gone into gardening. There was also a nice swimming pool and a bar was next to it. President Chiluba had chosen a nice place!
We were heading for the bar when we heard a woman shouting “go away, go away…” adorned with some other invectives that I prefer not to publish here. Then a very large elephant, tail up, was coming straight at us but luckily it veered off while we also tried to take cover. Behind the pachyderm came a tough looking stocky lady wielding a broomstick. The large bull was carrying a large chunk of a bougainvillea that it was clearly not allowed to take! It was a truly surreal and funny sight as the elephants we knew from East Africa did not interact with humans in that way.
After the elephant experience, our lunch and siesta, Bruno and I decided that it was time to tackle the radio room to find out what was taking place regarding our departure as well as to put some pressure on them so that our situation could be solved as soon as possible. The people were very polite but had no idea of the future. They knew the same things we did.
I was particularly insistent -assuming my Head of Agency status- and I mentioned that I needed to get back to Lusaka as I oversaw our organization’s main office and had diplomatic tasks to fulfil. While I was proffering my solemnest possible speech, I noticed that Bruno walked out of the room. Once I finished with my diatribe, I got the usual polite promise that they would try their best.
Rather annoyed I left the room and found Bruno outside, laughing loud. “What do you find so funny?” I asked him, rather upset at his apparent lack of solidarity. He looked at me and still laughing replied “Julio, I wish you could look at yourself in a mirror” and went on, saying: “who on earth is going to believe that you are the Head of an international agency looking like that!” Then I realized that I was rather scruffy after a week of bush life: dirty shirt and shorts, untidy beard and hair and a floppy hat. I realized that he was right, and I also burst out laughing. As often, Bruno had a good point!
After our control room futile visit, we went back to our lodge and spent the rest of the afternoon with the family. While at our bungalow, I spotted a large elephant coming towards the lodge following the lake shore. It walked a few metres from us, and I noted that it was a male with only one tusk. I brought the children to see it and told Bruno about it.
Our daughter Flori comes to know what elephant dung is!
Oblivious to our presence the elephant walked close to us and continued towards the lodge. After a while we heard a mighty noise coming from the kitchen area followed by loud shouting. The elephant re-appeared scurrying back to where it came from! We decided that it was a good time to enjoy the pool.
Before dinner it was time to get our toddlers back to our rooms for an early dinner and sleep while we got ready for a visit to the bar for a Mosi beer. The bar was a large rondavel with a thatch roof and no walls, very adequate for the place as the breeze made it very pleasant. There we joined other guests and we were enjoying the courtesy drinks from Zambia Airways when the barman announced that “One tusk” was coming for his drink!
We realized that we knew it when we saw it coming. It was huge. Immediately, a soda was poured on a rather large ashtray on the bar counter. Unaware of what was happening we waited. The elephant came very close and stuck its rather large trunk through the glassless window straight to the soda that had been poured for it. It sucked it dry in a second while we watched, rather concerned as we knew the power an elephant. As if to confirm our fears, after drinking it started waving its trunk about looking for more and forcing all patrons to congregate at the centre of the rondavel, away from the reach of its proboscis! This continued for a while until the barman -clearly used to the visitor- managed to chase him away.
The following day, a Sunday, we went back to the control room to make our case heard again to the company and continue keeping pressure up regarding our return. We were informed that two flights were expected that morning but no other details were available. We were cautiously hopeful and went back to the lodge to pass on the news and have breakfast. We decided to pack and be ready while waiting for the promised flights.
A plane arrived at about 10 am and we rushed to the airstrip only to be told that it was a flight going to Dar es Salaam and only stopping to drop some mail and food for the lodge. Our hopes dimed and we were starting to abandon the airstrip when the purr of another plane became louder and louder. It landed and out came a smiling plump pilot dressed in a tracksuit that introduced himself as Mr. Chizonda and informed us that he was there to take us all back to Lusaka on his 12-seater plane with the apologies of Zambia airways for leaving us the previous day.
We were elated and did not make him wait to get on our specially chartered plane back to Lusaka!
To change a bit, I offer you a rather different “spot” today.
One of the main attractions of Mana Pools National Park in Zimbabwe (apart from the river, the light, the various campsites, the wild dogs, the elephants, the lions and I stop there naming just a few!) is to be able to walk through the park despite it holding the Big 4 (sadly the rhino is no longer there).
While walking is a great way to explore the park you must be careful as, often, you do not see the animals until you are too close for comfort and you need to be prepared to respond appropriately. This is one of the cases that seems incredible until it happens to you.
Imagine that you are walking there now, what can you see?
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What look like tree trunks, suddenly become legs and they start moving!
You had just disturbed the siesta of a large elephant and it is coming your way!
You realized that it is a bull elephant but the most important thing at that time is to back down slowly and start taking pictures through a zoom lens!
It is irrelevant here to argue against or in favour of naming wild animals. It happens often among the big five and others that are singled out for certain notable characteristics or behaviour and I am sure it helps researchers in their work. There is a tusker-naming project at the Letaba Elephant Hall in the Kruger National Park and many notable animals have been given names, not only in Africa but also throughout the world.
Boswell in Mana Pools is a bull elephant that is one of the legitimate owners of the place. It kindly let us enjoy its home without a grudge while it goes about its business. Boswell is well known by all that, like us, are frequent visitors of this beautiful wilderness area. It has a distinct feature: it can reach for the apple ring acacia pods higher than its colleagues.
Over the years it has developed a trick that few others can match: it does not only stretch but over-stretches by standing on its hind legs in perfect balance while it feeds at incredible heights. I do not know how it learnt to do it but perhaps it is an elephant tradition that is passed from generation to generation at Mana Pools.
Whatever the origin of its skill, many brilliant pictures have been taken in the past by great photographers and these can easily be found in the Internet. However, one thing is to watch professional pictures and/or documentaries and another, rather different one, is to see it performing live, just like any artist!
We have seen Boswell often once we learnt to recognize it but we have not seen its trick as it only takes place at a certain time of the year when the right conditions are present. Even at that time, you must find Boswell and it has to be willing to perform. This is not as easy as you may think.
During our last visit to Mana Pools last July game was not yet abundant in the riverine part of the park so I decided to cut short my participation in a family game drive and stay in camp to take things easy and to watch what was going on there as its proximity to the river is always rewarding. We had been, as usual, “attacked” by monkeys and the baboons were particularly vicious when they did not find anything, pulling down one tent an even biting our solar-powered lamps!
I spent some time tidying up and eventually sat down to have a cuppa and to write notes on the trip. Although it passed about five metres from me I only saw Boswell’s bottom and looked for the camera only to realize that it was with the rest of the family! Luckily I had my iPad with me!
Boswell crossed the river fast and soon reached a couple of acacias on the other side, about one hundred metres from me. There it started feeding and I watched for the first time his two-legged feeding trick.
As usually happens, my pictures are rather pathetic but I am, nevertheless, proud to be able to say that I saw Boswell performing for me alone at its home!
Yesterday (12 August) it was World Elephant Day and I thought that what we saw last week at Ngweshla pan in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe is a suitable scene to remember these amazing animals that the more I watch, the more I get entertained and admire.
I owe my increasing interest for these animals to my daughter (the intermittent Senior Editor of this blog) who, from very young age was fascinated by these animals and gradually “educated” me to appreciate them.
As days passed the temperature at Mana Pools continued to rise. The morning of the 19th of September it was already oven hot at 06.00hs so the decision on what to do was easy as the moving car seemed to be the coolest option available. We planned a longish route as we wanted to re-visit a rather remote dry river bed close to the Rukomechi area. When the hot wind started to blow dust on us we knew that it was time to leave the camp!
We skipped breakfast but took all necessities with us to stop and enjoy it on route near the Zambezi as the drive offered a few nice shady spots. We drove until a place known as Vundu[1]point and stopped there to break our fast after a couple of hours of slow driving and enjoying the wilderness.
A gaggle of Spur-wing geese (parents and five young adults) were at the riverbank and slowly walked away as soon as we left the car.
Some of the Spur-wing geese.
One of the adults.
The heat could be felt despite the thick shade provided by the gigantic sausage trees of the riverine forest but this did not seem to bother a lone and open-mouthed crocodile basking on one of the riverbanks nearby.
Breakfast over, we moved on reaching the dry Nyakasanga river an hour later. We crossed its sandy bed and drove a while thinking that we would get back to the Zambezi but, as it is often the case, we had misread the map and in fact we were moving away from it! So, after searching for cell signal up a tree (my wife) and taking a few pictures of a baobab tree, it was time to get back to camp for lunch at an oven-like Gwaya camp.
In search of that elusive cellphone signal!
The baobab tree.
The heat and dust were still waiting for us when we made it back by 13.00hs as we got further delayed examining a rather large fungus we found on a tree trunk!
Fungus close-up. The bluish circle above is Nature’s work.
After a very light lunch it was a question of surviving the heat and dust (mainly for my wife!). She decided to have a cold shower at the small toilet/shower cabin and to remain there, away from the heat and dust for the rest of the afternoon, until the temperature dropped. She did not mind sharing the place with its tree frogs occupants. There were at least three of them and one insisted in staying under the WC plastic seat. We removed it everyday for fear of crushing it and placed it on a tree outside but it was back the next day!
My wife’s vantage point!
As usual, it was siesta time for me, despite the heat and dust. It was quite a feat but I managed a few minutes! The siesta over and feeling heat-hit, I hanged my sun-heated shower (I do not like cold showers!) from a tree behind our tent, open the tap and started to enjoy the refreshing feeling of water being poured over you in the open air.
I had showered for a couple of minutes and I was busy soaping myself when I heard my wife calling me, pointing towards the back of the camp. An elephant was walking, apparently, in my direction! As elephants do that all the time at Gwaya, I continued with my shower as I still needed some cleaning to do!
The elephant coming (I forgot to leave my hat on…).
After a minute I looked again and the pachyderm was much closer! It left me in no doubt that I was the object of its curiosity! “I cannot believe this” I thought and, thinking that the soap smell was the lure, I started removing the foam and placed the soap back in its box. “#$@&%*!” I thought, seeing no change in attitude, “the blipping elephant is coming for the shower water having the whole Zambezi behind me!” I closed the tap and remained immobile and soapy[2].
The elephant came very close. Luckily it stopped a couple of metres away and it had a long look at me. As it was also naked, I did not feel any embarrassment, only moderate panic and an immense wish to survive in order to remove the soap from my body and continue living.
Although I am sure that “the look” it gave me was brief, it felt long. Eventually the elephant slowly moved off as it clearly decided that my “manhood” was -naturally- no challenge to his “elephanthood”! I even thought I heard a jeering noise coming from the curious pachyderm as it walked away! My relief at its withdrawal was short-lived. The water got finished and I had to remove the remaining lather with what I wanted to avoid: cold water!
Needless to say that my wife watched all this and forgot about the heat and dust. So did I!
Gwaya camp, Mana Pools, Zimbabwe, September 2015.
[1] A Vundu (Heterobranchus longifilis) is a catfish reaching up to 150 cm in length and 50 kg of weight.
[2] Although the elephant is shown naked, pictures of the bushsnob “al fresco” are omitted to keep this blog PG.
After finding buffalo and lions close to camp, that night we heard lots of loud nocturnal noises, including lions roaring but also other unidentified nocturnal sounds that we allocated to hippo and/or elephants. In the early hours of the morning hyenas also called so our hopes were up and an early morning exploration of the surrounds was in order.
We followed the Zambezi down river, past the buffalo that were now moving towards the river, but we found no trace of predators. After a while we decided to try to contact the world again and went for the cellphone signal spot following our GPS (we had entered the coordinates on a previous visit). We searched fruitlessly for a while until we decided that probably the hot wind was blowing it away! We decided to get back to camp before the heat became more intense.
As usual we got delayed. First it was a pool where a very photogenic saddle-bill stork was wadding and then we watched the antics of a slender mongoose looking rather cunning!
We got back to Gwaya camp by lunchtime and it was already quite hot. As usual our elephant bull askari[1] was in attendance, waiting for us while browsing and picking up elephantine delicacies: the acacia pods from the Apple-ring acacias![2] Aware of our noisy arrival it gently moved off while we spent time putting together the mess the baboons make when you leave your camp alone.
The elephant decided to cross the river in search of fresh grass, its usual move. It decided to cross from our camp so I left the baboon-recovery exercise for a while to take a few pictures of the jumbo crossing.
Unfortunately the shots were not what I thought so I only took a couple and then filmed its arrival to the opposite bank. For some reason it chose the steepest place. It showered and beat the water to get some mud before it climbed on the bank with some degree of difficulty. I stopped filming and went back to set right the baboon damage.
After crossing the narrow channel the elephants, usually, spend the afternoon on a wide grassy plain that exists between the canal and the main body of the river, perhaps 500 m away. I forgot about the elephant as it would only return later at night and be there tomorrow again. However, after about ten minutes from the crossing I herd it trumpeting and running back towards our camp, trunk up and shaking its head rather violently. It crushed back into the canal and started re-crossing it!
The jumbo returning.
I saw it coming so grabbed the camera and placed myself at a good spot to film it coming back across the water. I videoed it while coming but, in my enthusiasm, I forgot that I was quite close from its exit and unexpectedly; he climbed the bank and charged me!
As you can imagine -at my age- I am not too keen to find out if an elephant is charging or mock-charging! Therefore my finger pressed the stop recording button and I withdrew.
The fact that I am writing these lines comfortably seated at home means that it was –luckily- a mock-charge and he stopped after a couple of more steps!
The reasons for its return and bad temper will remain a mystery and a matter of speculation. It could have been an encounter with a bee swarm, common at this time of the year, as elephants do not like them. There was also a bull buffalo nearby that could have irritated the pachyderm? We will never know but I did got my adrenalin rush!
After our interaction the cheeky elephant did not wander off but remain at camp, clearly as a demonstration of his unquestionable dominance over me! During that time we kept an eye on each other and I was careful to avoid having my siesta under his favored acacia, just in case!
A while later -after re-gaining its compusure- I saw it crossing back towards the Zambezi. This time he chose another spot about fifty metres up river and, this time, it did not come back until the following morning.
While at Mana Pools National Park we met this elephant. At first we dismissed it as a “one tusker” but when we looked at it from a different angle it immediately became clear that we were wrong!
While its right tusk looked healthy and nicely curved, its left tusk had grown in the wrong direction and it was pointing down and towards the back.
I have seen pictures and references in the literature of elephants with weird tusk arrangements so this find is not really an unusual one. It is much more rare to find an elephant with three tusks and I recall a hunter (probably Ionides) who tracked a famous three-tusker. More recently, an animal with this same rare characteristic was spotted in Nxai Pan National Park in Botswana by Stuart Arnold (http://www.exploreafrica.net/whats-happening-now/3-tusk-elephant-nxai-pan/).
In our case, what made this animal interesting was its habit of placing its trunk behind its left tusk, giving it a weird look.
Based on its size and condition, the bent tusk does not appear to have had a negative impact on its life and it is unlikely that it will affect it in the future. We will keep an eye open for it in our upcoming visits to the Park.
A Bushsnob in Africa 