Jake's Big Elephant Adventure...

There's a saying in life: It's not what you know, it's who you know.  This was especially true for Jake, who on our latest holiday to the Kruger National Park, was treated like a real VIP visitor by our friends in the bush.  He was allowed the privilege of taking part in activities that other tourists never get to experience and he has the most amazing memories of this once in a lifetime experience.  We were so honoured and humbled by our experiences and by the remarkable people we met along the way, who are doing so many amazing things to protect our wildlife.  this post is about Jake's up close and personal experience with a sedated elephant.

PLEASE NOTE:  You may not phone the park and ask to take part in these activities, they are not available to the public.

A very excited boy on the back of the open ranger with game rangers and vets...

The tracker helicopter had already located the elephant bull that was to be sedated.  The main purpose of the outing was to demonstrate elephant sedation to around 80 veterinary students and we were fortunate enough to tag along.  Here he comes...

 The helicopter has to work very closely with the elephant, so that the vet on board can inject the animal from the air.  It's very precise work, especially since the medication used is 10 000 times stronger than morphine.  There's no room for error.  They obviously also needed to try keep the ellie in view, but not too close, so that the students could see how the sedation progressed...

 It took about 14 minutes for the sedative to take effec.  You can see the dart sticking out above his rear end...

   At this point, the ellie was so sleepy, he could hardly lift his feet...

 He was obviously feeling it, when he went to hide away from us behind a bush...

 The ground crew were ready to move in as soon as he toppled...

 Umph...  trunk up, he's man down...

 Once the elephant is down, the guys need to move in quickly to catch his trunk.  If the elephant lands on his trunk, he's in trouble...

 But this one was easy - he just flopped over...

 Night night ellie, enjoy your snooze.  At this point, the 80 vet students had been instructed to wait until called to get out of their cars, but we were part of the vet's team, so we were able to get there almost immediately...

 He was HUGE...

 This is the head vet at Kruger Wildlife Veterinary Services...

 I think Jake was in shock at being able to get out in the bush and get so close to an elephant...

 A close up of his tusk...

 It takes 2 men to lift the elephant's back leg, to get it into a more comfortable position...

 The elephant was about 25 years old and I can't help but wonder how many miles these mud-caked feet had traveled...

  The vet students were allowed 15 minutes per group with the elephant, where we had a full 1 hour 15 mins with him...

One of the vets monitored the elephants eye closely to make sure that he was still OK...

 Look how thick his trunk is...

 The skin on an elephant's trunk is unbelievably warty and actually quite hard...

Jake wasn't at all put off by the students.  In fact I think he quite liked being surrounded by all these pretty girls...

 Toenails...

 Bumpy skin...

 It's really very rough up close...

 Wrinkly elephant knees...

 And very coarse tail hairs...

Jake giving the ellie some love...

 And don't forget me!  How many people can say that they've done that before???

 This is the site where they darted the elephant.  You're not allowed to touch it, because the drugs are so hectic and can penetrate your skin.  It's disinfected and marked out immediately...

 Peeping over the elephant's tummy...

 The trunk has to be kept open with a stick, so that the elephant doesn't suffocate...

 You wouldn't believe what this very brave vet student asked to be allowed to do...

 Jake's face says it all...

 Making sure that I'm actually watching....

 Some more skin time with the ellie...

 Jake with our friend, Steven...

 This is the entire group of students that we shared this experience with...

 Once the students had all been chased back to their van, Jake and I could have a few pics on our own with Jumbo...

 Jake and Steven with the ellie too.  PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ELEPHANT IS NOT DEAD, JUST SEDATED...

 As a last minute treat, Steven insisted on taking our car for us, so that we could go in the helicopter!!!

 I cannot even begin to tell you HOW excited we were...

 One that Steven took of both of us before lift off...

 And then it was time to wake Jumbo up...

 Antidote in and time to clear out.  It took about 1.5 minutes for the elephant to wake up from here...

 Up we go - you can see the elephant with the last 2 vets running away and the vans full of students watching from the ground)...

 It was quite funny watching the elephant waking up.  He rocked and rocked and the other pictures I have show his boy bits in all their glory and really aren't very pretty...

 And eventually he had enough momentum to hoist his heavy body up...

 I wonder what he thought about all the smells and sensations he must've felt after our experience with him...

 It took us about 20 minutes to get to where we were going and we had a gorgeous scenic trip over the bush...

 It was magnificient!

 The land is dry and we didn't see many animals, but it was still AMAZING...

 Jake treasured every second...

 A giraffe from the sky...

 A blurred bateleur, which is Jake's favourite eagle.  Not often that you get to see one of these in flight from above!

 Zebras running away from the helicopter...

 And some wildebeest...

 Back at Steven's house, he shared his skull collection with Jake.  These are all from animals that have died of natural causes in the bush, none were hunted.  This is a lion skull - now Jake can say that he's had his head in a lion's mouth...

SO... that was adventure number one!  I told you we were spoiled!! Pop in next week to see what else we got up to - would you believe me if I said it was even more amazing???

Have a happy weekend!

Love Sue XXX

Finally, some pics...

 The Narina Trogon, spotted and photographed by Jake outside Sudwala Caves.

 Yes, yes, I know that I am long overdue in sharing our holiday photos.  There are just SO many to work through, that it's taking a lot longer than I had expected.  I'll start right at the very beginning and work my way from there...  Scroll on by if you're not interested in seeing what we got up to - it was SUCH an adventure.

Our trip started early on the morning of 4 July.  We were picked up by our taxi from my parents house at 6am and headed off to the airport, for our flight just before 8.  We landed in Lanseria and collected our rental.  The trip from Lanseria to Kruger is long, but we were all excited and made a few stops along the way.  The main stop for us was the Sudwala Caves.  Jake's never been in a cave before and had studied these ones, very briefly, at school this term.  He was super excited to get going and the caves didn't disappoint.  Unfortunately, I don't have fantastic shots from inside the caves, so just one or two...

 The Screaming Monster aka Donkey Kong...

 Wet cave formations...

 It was pretty humid inside the caves...

 Heading through one of the narrower tunnels...

 This is called the amphitheater and they have put up a stage for concerts.  We had a group of kids visiting the caves with us and they hopped onto the stage and sung a song.  It was very sweet...

 Jake's decided that it's not very cool to smile in photos, he did have fun, I promise!!

 Thrilled to have been on his cave adventure...

We spent our first two nights at a place called Marloth Park, which is just south of Kruger, bordering on the park, which meant that we could get into the park bright and early on the 6th.  Marloth is pretty big and the roads are not fantastically marked and, quite frankly, I think I'm still amazed that we found the spot.  But we did and it was lovely!!  It's very much "living in the bush" and the animals wonder in and out of the garden all day.  The birds are magnificent and it's really so peaceful...

 A helmeted shrike...

 A grey headed shrike (aka Spookvoel, because he's so seldom seen)...

 We went down to the Crocodile River, which forms the boundary between Kruger and Marloth to see what was lolling around in the water.  We spotted some water buck, with their dart board bums...

 Some Impala drinking very cautiously and always on their guard.  A saddle billed stork was fishing for his lunch nearby...

 It's funny how "on guard" buck always are.  They look like they're ready to run at any second...

 A heavy hippo making his way back to the river...

 We stopped at a hide a little further up the river...

 Jake and my dad...

 We spotted this family of giraffe inside Marloth, which made me a little worried about which other big animals were hiding in the bushes.  We did hear a lion roaring in the early hours of the morning - he sounded really close...

 This little guy was super cute, even sticking his tongue out for Jake...

 Because there are no fences, Jake decided to try get a little closer - he was very wary of the mommy and daddy, but they seemed to have wandered off a bit and so it looked safe enough...

 The baby checked Jake out...

 And Jake checked the baby out...

 He actually managed to get pretty close, before this little guy trotted off to his mommy...

 A Kudu cow - I love their ears and their milkshake moustaches...

 This was our bungalow.  It was lovely by day, but there was no electricity and the gas lamps were very dim.  I didn't look for spiders, I'm sure there were plenty of big ones...

 From the stoep to the braai...

 At night, the bush babies came down to eat the fruit we put out for them.  This one loved the avo he found...

 There were 5 of them in total and they are very nervous little things.  I've seen the big bush baby before, but never the lesser one - they're just too precious...

 

We were spoiled with visits to our hut from a warthog, some impala, an ostrich, baboons, mongooses, the bush babies and so many beautiful birds.  It was a lovely stop over point and gave us all time to recharge before going into the Kruger.

I'm trying my best to wade through the thousands of photos I have from our trip and I'll share them with you as I can.  I'm trying to narrow it down to 20 of the best for each day.

Sending love,

Sue XXX

It's about time...

Every time I blog, I seem to be writing about how busy I am... Well, it's beyond a joke at the moment!  Work is insanely busy and there just don't seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done.  I have always been privileged to work until 1pm, but I am going to have to start putting in a few more hours a week to get everything done.  It's a good sign and I do enjoy my job, so I can't really complain.

Jake did unbelievably well in his exams.  He worked hard and performed well.  I don't think he expected anything less than his best, but you never know how things go on the day.  I am very proud of how hard he has grafted and we are working hard on him doing more of the work on his own now too - I will not be doing summaries when he gets to high school, then he's on his own, so to say.  Jake is very bright, but like most of us, he's lazy at times and so I'll always need to encourage him.  I actually quite enjoy being part of his studying and learning.  I love seeing what they're doing in class and how they go about it...  It's way different being a parent though and, despite what I say, I am really glad that it's holidays!!

We're one week into the holidays and Jake has enjoyed spending a couple of bonus nights with Michael and Cameron, who also outdid themselves in their term tests (not exams yet - they're on a Cambridge curriculum, so only start in grade 7).  We've eaten out and he's slept over at his granny and grandpa.  He's having a friend over to play today too and we'll be going out with Marius and the boys too.  It's so nice to be able to get out of routine and to have a break from packing lunch boxes!!

Tomorrow though, the fun begins!!  Jake and I are heading off to The Kruger National Park for 2 weeks!!  My mom and dad are joining us and I am sad to say that Marius and his boys opted out this time around.  We are going to REALLY miss them!!  We fly to Lanseria early tomorrow morning, pick up our rental and head on to Marloth Park for 2 nights.  We will stop off at the Sudwala Caves to do a tour and have lunch.  Jake studied (very briefly) these caves in Geography this term, so I'm quite excited to share them with him.  We are meeting up with friends in Marloth Park, which borders on the southern part of the Kruger National Park. 

From Marloth, we spend 2 nights at Skukza, 2 nights at Satara, 3 nights at Olifants (our absolute favourite)  and 3 nights at Shingwedzi - so we'll basically be travelling the entire length of the park. We were very lucky to get amazing spots within each of these campsites, so excited about that.  It's school holidays and the dry season in the park, so it is a popular time of year to visit.  It's also a malaria zone, so when it's dry, it means no mozzies!  I have a few "little" surprises planned for us while we're there, but you'll have to pop back in a couple of weeks time to see what we manage to get up to.  Put it this way, Jake is one hell of a lucky boy!!!  We leave the park on the 16th and have one last stop over before flying home again on the 17th.  Jake starts school on the 20th, so we get home and start running...

OK, gotta go get work done.  Sorry again that I've been so scarce again, hopefully I'll be able to post one or two snaps from the bush!

Lots of love,

Sue XXX