I Love Elephants!

Turning away, hiding their eyes, or walking away are all strategies the elephants use to avoid contact with you.  Capturing a full face photo is by chance, by luck.  No matter, I could just watch the elephants hour upon hour.

Nearly always the elephants are in herds of females.  Older males are off by themselves.

It appears that it is generally playtime anytime an elephant is close to water.

Ahh!

After his mud bath, it's time for some dirt.

This was probably the largest elephant we saw.  We were driving along the same empty road he was walking on.   Slowing to allow him to go at his own rate and staying a generous distance away, we followed him.  I don't think he liked us following him.  He turned around and purposefully started towards us.  Steve immediately stopped and began backing up.  As in the Galapagos, animals always have the right of way, and elephants must have the greatest right of way.  Suddenly he veered off to his right.  There are scary videos on the internet showing what upset elephants will do when you do not show great respect.  Granted, we were not a tiny white car, but...things could have turned out differently.

Often we saw large groups of elephants off in the distance.

Once we discovered a large group of female elephants spread out along a dry river bed below our parking area.  Some were digging into the sand to reach water lower down.

After a while, a matron and her friend noticed us parked up on the bank.  They kept maneuvering themselves around so as to seem to shelter the two younger elephants from our view, especially the little one, as they dug for water.

But the little one kept moving around, laying down, getting up, flopping down again, and rolling in the damp sand.  It must have felt delightfully cool.

The mothers appeared to enlist the older sibling to try to help shield the little one while they dug for water- to no avail.

They finally had their fill of water and moved away into the bush.

This guy knew there was water in the tank.

Another mother elephant tried to keep her offspring close and away from our car.  Not realizing how close we were to her and her baby, she trumpeted once to let us and her baby know that she did not like us all being so close.  We moved away very quickly to calm her.

Elephants are my favorite animals.