Elephants in the swimming pool!
Trip Start
Unknown
1
6
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Francistown, Botswana
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The main road to Elephant Sands is for 10km full of massive potholes.Every car, lorry etc tries to drive around them which creates big dust clouds. One lorry carrying diesel had come off the road and was properly wedged into the sand.
We eventually reached Elephant Sands which is a small lodge hidden amongst the trees. It has its own watering hole in front of the swimming pool, but the elephants prefer to drink the pool water to replenish their salt content. Paola and myself set up the tent behind the pool so we could get a front row view of the elephants. The showers and toilets are again outside, all the water is salted so it's great for the skin, you just had to remember to keep your mouth closed whilst showering. The owner of the lodge who everyone calls Uncle Ben took us out on the jeep to show us his land, we took with us a case of drinks and beef jerky(yummmm). We came across 3 watering holes, one had lots of elephants washing, the minute they saw us they headed off apart from 2 young elephants who kept splashing whilst the matriarch of the herd waited patiently by the side, keeping an eye on us and them.
There are also lions, hyenas, spingbok etc on the land, although not impossible, the lions had never wandered into the campground.
Later that night i was woken up by the sounds of elephants splashing in the pool, they made a low snoring like sound(i thought it was Paola at first)which is them breathing, unfortunately i needed to use the toilet, so i woke Paola up, we debated for ages what to do, we had been told not too use our torches, and that the elephants thought our tents were rocks so we did not want to leave the tent. Also our idea of a front row view never worked as it was pitch black so couldn't see a thing. But hey it's all part of the fun, the elephants did leave eventually and returned around 4am for a final drink.
Today we travelled 509km.
