On our trip throughout Southern Africa we went through a place called “Tuskers campsite” right next to “Ivory lodge”. Needless to say, the names indicate the presence of elefants. And we did se elephants; around twenty to thirty of them grazing in the plains together with wildebeest, zebras and tsessebe, which by the way is the fastest antilope in all of Africa.  

They were calmly grazing without any worries except getting their daily dose of food, and protecting a tiny baby elephant that couldn’t have been more than a month old.

All was quiet and calm until a zebra decided to walk a bit further away from the group. This was not well received by Mr. King-of-the-world pubescent elephant. He decided that the zebras better stay in line or else he must keep them in line; the next thing we see is him chasing the poor thing.

Elephants are not really that fast, at least not fast enough to catch up with a zebra, so Mr. Tough-guy has to give up. But now he is in a chasey mood. Oh, look, a tsessebe! Chase, chase, chase! Nope, that one was also too fast.

We are sitting there in our jeep just watching this hormonal elephant chasing everything that moves and think: “We are supposed to be going to the other side. But how?”

We start slow, pretending like we don’t exist and hoping that he doesn’t see us. That works for about four seconds before he spots us and decides that we are the ugliest thing that ever came on to his territory. The ears go up, the eyes go wild and he charges straight at us.

I don’t know if you have ever seen an angry elephant, but they are friggin’ scary!

We realise that slow and steady isn’t working; tactics quickly change to full throttle. We manage to drive past him as he is charging from the side, but he continues chasing us.

Safari vehicles are made to be able to go anywhere, but they are not really the fastest cars in the world, so Mr. Grumpy-face keeps up with us for quite some time before he decides we’re not worth the effort and returns to the cutest little baby elephant ever.

Phieew! Crisis averted.

When you get chased by an elephant it is not that easy to hold the camera steady to get good pictures. We got the pictures though, motion blur and all. They might not be the best pictures of elephants, but you can’t say they don’t communicate the action.