Elephants at midnight.

From my rooftop tent.....

Etosha game reserve in Namibia has to be one of my most favourite places in all the world. 

My favourite camp is Okaukuejo, sort of in the middle.

Rooftop tenting is special. It is penthouse living while one is camping!  Ours includes a good, comfortable mattress, feather pillows and a warm duvet for cold night in desert areas.

There is a very special waterhole there which is floodlit all night.

One evening after a crispy chop from the braai and a glass of cold Sauvingnon we settled down at the waterhole, binocs, camera, coffee in a flask. There was a crackle of lightning far off and the scene was set.

In the gathering gloom a rhino stood surveying the scene. He scented the air cautiously and something made him stay in the shadows.

There they were ...emerging like ships on the sea in full sail....three massive bull elephants.....the chief bull slightly in front and his two lieutenants. They were the fore runners, casing the scene, making the area their own.

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I think they spied the shadowy rhino  because we were treated to a full blown stage show of pure aggression.

The bull charged a tall dead tree stump. His trumpet roar tingled the hairs on my head and made my flesh crawl. He ran with great sails of ears flapping forward, his tail straight out behind him. He screeched to an almost stop to SWIPE this dead tree clean out of the ground with a thrust of his huge head and trunk. Blood pounded through my veins and tears rose as his primeval screech shocked my senses.

The shadow rhino lay down submissively, his short legs stretched somewhat comically in front of him.

Each lieutenant took up his position..........on guard.

And then herd of mothers, aunties, teenagers and baby elephants come down the dusty path out of the darkness, like the chorus in the play. They were thirsty and probably had walked miles for hours to find this oasis. 

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The babies always steal the show with their naive gamboling in the water. Their tiny trunks look like little question marks and they play like children unaware of the huge responsibility that the big bull elephant takes on to protect his herd.

They stayed a couple of hours. They walked into the water, some rolled in the muddy shallows, two youngsters shoved each other, forehead to forehead, practising for that big day when one of them would challenge the bull for leadership.

I sat enthralled........Africa in all her GLORY under floodlights.

Thoughts of poachers and the ivory trade were not in my mind. I was caught up in the scents and sights of these wild animals behaving as they should be, free to move and be who they really are.

I was humbly privileged.

At last it was time to go and as the last baby elephant trundled off between all those dozens of legs, the silence wafted back in...........the show was over.

Or was it?

Gradually act 2 was building up!

In the distance some skittish giraffes were inching closer. 

In the shadows something suddenly moved. It was the forgotten rhino (a young one I thought) who was stirring his stiff joints and slowly getting to his feet. Gradually he shuffled down to the water probably desert dry and desperate to drink.

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Never a baby! He was a full grown rhino, as big as a Volkswagen Beetle car and he wandered down to the water. There was no sign of his being intimidated. He owned the waterhole and he sipped water for a long while and sniffed the midnight air with drops dribbling down in a silvery stream.

Act 3 was the eventual arrival of the balletic  giraffes but my bed was seriously calling me and my 'high' was diminishing, so regretfully I too disappeared into the night, to the warmth of my roof top tent.

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