Elephants

One up close and personal encounter was with an elephant ambling quite close to our cabins on the Okavango Delta.

 In Zimbabwe, man-made water holes are much appreciated.

 An elephant shakes a tree to make tasty pods fall to the ground.

 

Elephant dung repels insects when burned, a valuable tsetse fly deterrent in Zambia.  Another guide told us his wife drank elephant dung diluted in water to ease delivery pains - she swears by it!

On the Chobe River, elephants swim out to eat grass. When one arrives, it greets the other elephants by intertwining trunks before it moves on to feed.  My big thrill was dozing off in the sunshine on our cruise and then waking up to see an elephant swimming next to me.

Our guides tried to gently broach the subject of "culling" elephants where they are overpopulated and destroying the natural environment.  We did not want to hear any of it.