Not sure if I have mentioned it already, but my mother has a thing for elephants. So we spent an extra day at Elephant Sands. Most of the people were just overnighting and so we had the camp-site to ourselves the next morning.
I'll be dead honest - if you'd told me at some point I'd spend a day simply watching elephants, I'd not have believed you...
I've seen a million elephants in my life time between various game reserves and similar. But I've never stopped and spent time to watch how they interact with each other. It was absolutely amazing to see.
Had a chat with the owner in the morning asking about whether there were resident elephants or all migratory. He mentioned there were one or two that were sort of regular, but most were just passing through...
Most of the elephants rocking up during the day were bulls - either on the own or in small groups of two or three. Sometimes there was a little competition for the best spot at the waterhole. Was amusing to see how the elephants broke into a little run as they approached the waterhole - I presume they were relatively thirsty. But it was rather comical to see them run down with a jaunty beat to their step.
In the afternoon, a matriarchal herd of elephant rocked up, with one or two young ones - one of which was missing a tail.
Anyways, we spent the whole day watching the elephants and had an excellent steak at the restaurant for a late lunch. Headed back to camp and made a fire to have a few drinks whilst the sun set.
It was an interesting night in the camp... The elephants decided to enter the campsite to dig up the water-pipes for the ablutions. That in itself was pretty amazing to see. Sitting at our camp fire, we noticed the one elephant at the ablutions, and it was probably not even a minute before he was drinking water from the pipes he had unearthed. Thereafter he was joined by another few.
