TURN ON, TUNE IN, BREATHE OUT
‘There are elephants here,ʼ our guide, Brenden Pienaar, says as he wakes me with a gentle tap on my knee. I emerge from the depths of a post-lunch snooze and slowly process the information. Elephants? Here? Epic. I slip on my shoes, grab my camera and haunch to attention. Our group of eight is under a knobthorn, 50 paces from a waterhole, home to a pod of hippos. In the midday haze, I see the elephants a similar distance away, but in the opposite direction. Their trunks are up like snorkels, sniffing emphatically in our direction. As our scent hits them they veer off to the side, crashing through the brush towards the water, the earth seeming to rumble. Itʼs day two, so we know the three golden rules: donʼt run, stand behind the rifle and stay together. In essence, think like an impala.
Our human herd follows a line to the water parallel to the elephants. Theyʼre submerged now, about 10 of them, splashing and tumbling and spraying water, like toddlers on a beach holiday. Just as we relax, two big bulls arrive to our right, kind of hemming us in between the two groups. Trouble. The exact kind
