A dream come true.
Trip Start
Feb 2005
1
15
31
Trip End
Aug 2005
Kasane, Botswana
Thursday, May 5, 2005
The drive from Francistown yesterday was really good! WE got up early and ended up in Pie City for breakfast - which was actually really nice (the breakfast of champions) and then packed up the car, checked out of the lodge and parked the car in the carpark of one of the malls and went for a bit of a stroll around Francistown which was nice. Didn't really see anything particularly noteworthy but it was good just the same.
We went on our way at about 11. To be honest the journey was fairly boring. Just the same views that we'd already seen the day before, until we past Nata. Then the scenery changed and became all flat and barren and beautiful. We stopped to take some pictures and I got out of the car. I could have stayed there all day just looking and feeling the sun on my face and breathing the air. You really feel so cut off from the expereince sitting in a car. You go too fast and it's too loud to have the windows open so you have the air conditioning on and listen to music and then it's like looking at the view through a TV screen. But what else can you do really? The only way to avoid that is to go by bicycle and that would take 3 billion years!
After we stopped that one time we were merrily going along until I suddenly saw an elephant by the side of the road. At first I wasn't quite sure that I had seen what I'd seen! O turned around and we drove back to see him.
He was in a clearing a little way back from the side of the road and just chilling out really. We took pictures and watched for a while until he started to walk away. It really was amazing! A real live elephant just out in the world hanging around, not in a zoo or in a cage or on TV. Really there infront of me! (Brief note to explain to anyone who doesn't know: elephants are my favourite animals and hence my rediculous gushing.)
We got back in the car and carried on. We stopped at one of these rest stops that are along the way. They are basically some benches and tables set up underneath a big tree by the side of the road so you can sit in the shade and look really nice. However, what you don't see as you drive by is how messy and full of rubbish they are and just how many flies and other bothersome insects are buzzing around generally being annoying. We didn't stay long.
We drove on a little further and then I saw a giant grey head with big ears and a trunk sticking right out of the bush on my side of the road! We stopped and went back again and there was this HUGE elephant eating right at the side of the road! If I had gotten out of the car I could have touched it!!!! (Appologies now for the flagrant over-se of exclamation points, but it is rather difficult to get across a level of excitement in any other way.) But we didn't get out of the car. We took pictures and then carried on when it shook his head about and seemed a bit peeved at us.
We saw one more elephant. O spotted this one and it was drinking by a big puddle quite far back from the road. We got out of the car and walked down a little path to the clearing and took more pictures and wished we had the guts to go closer.
I will probably never get as close to a wild elephant as I will that one by the side of the road.
