On the fourth day there, we took a side
trip to the Tembe Elephant Park which is on the outskirts of Mozambique.
They say the largest elephants in Africa can be found here. The
main attractions here were two blinds which were set up outside
of established elephant watering holes.
As I was looking at the scenery outside the blind, it all seemed
oddly familiar. Then I discovered that there was a webcam attached
to the blind and I had randomly visited it months before while
researching Africa. I never made the connection that what I was
viewing on this African webcam I would some day see in person.
We saw plenty at this first blind. There were a half dozen elephants
and many kinds of hoofstock including kudu and wildebeest. We
saw the elephants spraying water or sand on their backs. It was
not obvious why certain elephants preferred sand over water. We
enjoyed a picnic lunch as we watched the elephants very quietly
at this watering hole until they wandered away.
We saw not much of interest at the second blind except for some
warthogs which magically blended into the scenery. We had been
staring at them for 15 minutes before we realized they were there.
Even though the Tembe elephants are in a preserve, they are still
poached. We saw a band of armed guards walking on foot in search
of poachers. To our uninitiated eye, these guards looked like
poachers themselves.
On our way along a remote and sandy trail, our path was blocked
by some fallen trees. My fertile imagination kicked in and I wondered
if the poachers had felled the trees for some purpose. We weighed
our option of retracing our travels via the trail we came in on
or trying to remove the tree. The tree was too large for all of
us to move so we broke off some branches which allowed our vehicles
to literally scrape by. I doubt the Zulu Nyala management was
pleased by the new scars on their vehicles.
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You thought your job was bad? This is a dung beetle rolling a big ball of $#|+. |
