Day 4: Elephant Sands
Happy birthday Kelsey! Yep! That's right! Kelsey and I have birthdays one day apart. I am born on June 5th and she's on the 6th. So all of the birthday celebrations were transferred to her. Cue the many happy birthday songs! =D. So most of today was spent travelling in the car through Botswana. I slept a lot of it because I didn't have the greatest sleep last night, but I did see a good portion of the countryside. Botswana seems a lot more arid and dry than South Africa, and much less fenced. Everything, or everything I've seen, in South Africa has a fence around it. This includes reserves, farms, properties, houses. In Botswana, the change was almost immediate. It seems like nothing is fenced here. I'm not kidding. We saw elephants by the highway! I also noticed a heck of a lot of livestock around the roads. A note in Africa: animals have the right of way. So if a cow wants to cross the road right in front of you, it can. Botswana is full of animals that don't seem to be constrained. I saw more goats than I can count today, and donkeys are a serious mode of transportation. We arrived to the Elephant Sands around 3:30 and boy, this is also a neat reserve. It was built around a water hole, but they supplement it these days. There are no fences, no boundaries, nothing. Animals come and go as they please, drinking here because this area is like a desert. Right now, I'm staring at about... eh, I don't know, 15 elephants? They're about 30 feet from me, and I'm just sitting on a patio. As I write this, I'm realizing how amazing this is. I am so close to wild elephants. It's absolutely... wow. One is waving his trunk at me. Hello! And there's a tiny little baby. It has to bend down really far to drink. Andddd one just trumpeted. This is amazing. I wish you all could be here to experience this. It's so cool. But supper's ready and I have to dash. We go to Victoria Falls tomorrow. Bungee jumping anyone?
PS - That is totally an elephant crossing sign that was on the highway