Tracking, tracking, tracking ...

Backblip #10

With not much success! Our final day of patrol and it seemed the elephants had decided not to grace us with their presence today. We froze our butts off on one the coldest days of the trip driving around looking for fresh tracks, poo and broken branches, with very little luck. We did eventually find a lone bull who ate in front of us for a bit before quietly disappearing behind some dense vegetation, but it seemed the herds were not willing to be found today. We were all a little sad (and frozen!) at not being able to say goodbye but all felt extremely privileged to have had the close encounters of the past three days.

In the top photo our project manager Chris was keeping our spirits up doing his best elephant impersonation! The branch in his mouth was actually still wet with saliva on the ends which meant they had only just passed through the area very recently. In the bottom image Matheus is walking up ahead of the unimog (aka the beast and our replacement vehicle) looking for elephant tracks. All the vollies were a little cold and sombre except crazy Sophie up the back!