Mother and Calf

Backblip #8

We were lucky enough to find Mama Africa's herd within half an hour this morning! We again parked several hundred metres in front of them and watched them amble towards us amongst the dense shrubbery. This calf had just finished drinking from mum when I took this shot.

This time we had two elephants come right up to our vehicles to inspect our presence. The first was a young cow who wasn't phased by us at all. The second cow was a little bigger and a little older. She flapped her ears at us and gave a soft low rumble - she seemed a little bit annoyed, but Matheus calmed her almost instantly by giving a soft low rumble back. One flick of her head and off she walked not giving us another thought! Then we could all relax, smile and breathe :-)

Not that we were at all worried. If she had been serious about not wanting us there she would have vocalised louder, flapped her ears more, potentially trumpeted and may have mock charged. She was just letting us know we were in her territory and to respect that.

After that exhilarating moment we decided to head off in search of the other two herds in the area. Unfortunately one of vehicles had other plans and decided to break down! Thankfully Chris and Matheus were able to do a temporary repair and we headed all the way back to base camp to change vehicles. By the time we lunch and got back to tracking it was late afternoon. We did manage to find a lovely large bull - new to the area - just before it was time to head off and find a camp site for the evening.