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GO BIG RED!!! How about the Husker's win over Oklahoma in Memorial Stadium?!? I'm so happy to hear the great news here in Namibia. If we can sneak by K State we should be playing Texas for the Big 12 Championship! I bet things are off the hook in Lincoln and I wish I could be there! We still have a lot of work to do on our offense, but I'll take a win over OU ANY day. Congrats huskers!
Travel experiences like the one I'm going through come with opportunity costs in relationships, delaying starting full-time jobs and grad school pograms, and I'm especially missing out on college football action, but I still think I'm getting the better deal by living in Namibia for half a year! But NU's win over OU kinda hits me in the stomach and reminds me of all the other big games I've seen played in Big Red's football country.
I don't have time right now to go into the whole conservancy "lessons learned" I picked up on traveling to Caprivi and Damaraland. I'm thinking this will need to be a recap post at the end of my time here. I learn so much everyday and especially when I go out into the field. I am excited about a UNL law professor coming out here to Namibia to really examine the pressures of why people join conservancies, the land rights, and ect. that go along with everything and I'm going to work laying out the network foundation I've established, so he can make the most out of his 8 days in Namibia.
I promised to share a story about my elephant experiences a week ago today. Here is my story.
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So there I was, just leaving the Tora Conservancy hunting quota setting meeting with WWF, IRDNC, Wilderness Safaris, and the Ministry of Environment and Tourism with my colleague Helge Denker. [This is a meeting each conservancy in Namibia organizes annual and debates occur about how many animals the conservancy can sustainably hunt. The numbers are recorded by WWF and MET, then its sent off to the MET office in Windhoek for the final approval].
We were off on a photo shoot for a wildlife/travel magazine I'll have to leave unnamed right now, and we were looking for elephants on the Huab river. The person on the magazine end wants a picture of me with wildlife and the landscape cannot be mistaken for anything else but Namibia/Africa. They're going to get what they asked for! I hope the editors are impressed too, because it was somewhat traumatic for me to take photos with elephants behind me!
It was pushing mid-afternoon and the weather was just hot. 90+ degrees and sweltering. The wind was blowing like the dickens and was sucking all the energy out of you. We were trying to find elephants, but we wanted to stop for lunch and take a brief nap till the weather cooled off. The wildlife were doing the same thing I imagine.
Two trucks from South Africa stopped us as we were entering the Huab River bed, and I think because they saw the panda on the side of the truck they thought we're the "know all" for wildlife and knew where to find elephants on the river, but we told them we haven't seen any elephants today.
These two trucks drove all over the west side of the river and said they found nothing, so we knew where not to look.
After we ate lunch and took a 15 minute nap, we started up the truck and went elephant tracking. We drove in the opposite direction of the two ZA trucks and I was worried they'd be around us if we found elephants and we'd have to spend extra energy working the camera angles to exclude them, but we didn't see any tracks going in our direction.
We walked over to a small hill with our bi-nocs and immediately spotted a couple of elephants in the far distance! One could not see them without bi-nocs.
"Jackpot" I thought! I was so excited. This was the same spot where Helge took Frans Lanting, National Geogrpahic photographer extraordinaire, a few months back. We were much closer to them this time around vs. Helge's last trip.
Off we went with our cameras ready to roll. It is also worth noting these are free roaming elephants and are not fenced in like Etosha or other private farms, so I was so excited to have an opportunity to photograph elephants in a natural setting like this.
Driving through the riverbed is a slow process. The gravel almost covers the rubber up to the metal rim, and we had to let air out a few days prior so we had better traction. The wind was blowing right at us, but made some nice dust effects of the elephants and made their ears stand flap out like wings on a bird.
When we finally come close to the elephants, there were 14 of them walking down our left side of the river toward us. There were bulls, mamas, and two calves. Right now, the wildlife, especially the elephants, love hanging out in the riverbed because all the trees have seedpods that are fresh and tasty. The riverbed is not very wide where we were driving and were probably 30 to 40 yards away from the elephants at times.
Here is a shot of a mother with her calf. It was so interesting to watch the calf try to act grown up by eating the seeds off of prairie grasses, but he wasn't having any success and was later nursing under his mother. The personalities just pour out of these elephants and the non-verbal communication is so much like humans.
We were snapping photos like crazy. For the first few minutes I was sitting in my car seat and just having the time of my life watching these elephants interact, graze, and walk past us. Helge was stepping out and taking pictures and I asked him when he came back into the truck to change lens if I could step out too. Helge said I could, but to stay CLOSE to the truck and hide the best you can. I slowly opened my door and my left side never left the side of the truck till I could place my telephoto lens on the back spare tire.
The elephants came close enough where it was time to start the truck. When we turned the key... nothing happened. We were stuck with a dead panda truck on the Huab river with a herd of elephants with calves walking by us/toward us. Things became a little serious and luckily when we popped the hood it was a loose battery cable problem and we tried wedging a 4 cent Namibian coin followed by a metal handle from an office clip we had on a stack of papers. We just waited for them to pass before we opened the hood and were lucky they were so calm.
What is humorous to me is how on the Friday morning [the day we left] we had a staff meeting to regroup on everyone's projects and ect. Chris showed some amazing Mongolia pictures and has a few of these goats many wildlife groups want to have pictures of because no one has adequately photographed them. Anyhoo, Marque said to everyone we need to report truck problems early so Denive can take of the problems before they become bigger problems. How fitting given our situation I thought!
The elephants didn't give us any problems during this pass and I was able to snap this picture.
This one will be a WWF public announcement photo in the coffee room warning people to report truck problems early.
I was so relieved to hear the diesel engine fire up and drive us to another prime photography spot. I ventured out again to take more photos. I know the elephants knew there were humans walking around and I would keep eye contact with them when I was walking around the truck waiting for trouble.
After I sat my lens on the back of the tire I thought this was totally nuts and will be forever hooked on wildlife photography.
Then Helge said it was time to take some pictures of me with the elephants and I retired my camera in the truck and slowly walked to the back of the truck staying close like he initially instructed. Helge instructed me to squat down about 2-3 meters from the truck and snapped away. I had to put all my trust into Helge, because I could not see what these elephants were doing and I was carefully listening for his signal to "move" toward him if necessary.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!! If the South Africa trucks would have been in the area we would have stayed in the trucks and not given anyone ideas about getting photos with elephants while standing in the river bed. If you decide to do something like this, have someone with many years of hunting and wildlife experiences assist you.
There was only one moment where he told me to move and come behind the truck so the elephants would forget about us. I stepped back into the truck and started taking pictures and meanwhile Helge is outside under the truck taking photos.
The light is turning out to be amazing at this point and I'm snapping away then all of a sudden I see a yellow yield sign on my camera saying "CF Card Full"
"Oh snap!" I thought! I changed my camera to take higher resolution photos and wasn't use to working with less memory. What horrible luck! Helge was still outside and I was flipping through and deleting photos and snapping one, then deleting then snapping again, and just frustrated I left my spare memory card in my camera bag and not in my shirt pocket. I'm smarter now.
One elephant, who we will now call Denive, named after our colleague became rather curious about the white panda truck sitting under the ana tree by the herd.
This is Denive:
And he slowly started wandering over to the truck:
And closer:
And closer:
Helge jumped back into the truck and I'm not sure how we let this elephant come so close, but I think we were just lost in the photography moment. Luckily we spent a lot of time with the elephants at this point and everyone was calm except me! lol
We noticed shortly after Helge came in the truck we were going to have a situation.
The only thing we could do was -painfully wait in dead silence and remain motionless and hope he'd loose interest.
Denive walked up to the truck and Helge said to slowly roll up my window and do not move. I took my time rolling up my window and kept my eye on Denive the whole time. Helge's hands were on the manual stick and keys ready to start the truck if needed, but that's the VERY last thing you want to do in this situation. A loud truck would startle Denive and entice him to level the truck and us in the process.
I couldn't contain myself with an elephant being so close and not taking a picture, but on the other hand this was a semi-serious situation. But I did snap this photo of our curious visitor.
Things became so quiet in the truck. My senses were just amped and I could hear the second hand in my REI pocket watch ticking... Denive just kept staring right at the windshield and I seriously thought this could be it for me. A lot of thoughts were racing through my head, but I kept hoping I'd live through this one. This elephant was always one step away from crushing the truck and his trunk could have easily slapped the hood of the truck.
I'm not sure how much time passed when Denive was right in front of the truck staring us down, but it felt something like eternity. I could see the grooves from digging for water and fighting on his tusks, all the little dimples and wrinkles on his trunk, and I took note elephants have brown eyes [I didn't not know this until I had a closer look at them]. THAT is how close he was to us. You truly feel power like you've never felt it before.
Denive slowly side stepped his away in front of the truck and planted himself under the ana tree our truck was being shaded by and continued to eat ana seedpods. At this point a sigh of relief came flowing through the car and Helge and I just watched this huge elephant eat these little seed pods the size of small cell phones. The elephant was never flustered, but I worried if he did become so, what would the mamas with calves behind us would have done?
Mother elephants are particularly dangerous because they normally have calves and smaller tusks, therefore, they're prone to become aggressive.
Luckily, we were just a roadblock between Point A and Point B for Denive and finding his ana seedpods. He was checking out the scene on the other side away from the herd I think and luckily kept his goal in mind the whole time.
At this point the good light opportunities were all gone, but I had enough fun for the day and was ready to go set up camp in a non-windy place. We fired up the truck when Denive was behind us and turned around and headed up a small side river channel. I shot some nice video of the elephants as were driving away I'll share later.
We found a nice little spot behind a huge rocky mountain and quickly collected sticks and dry grass to start our brai fire. When we had the fire going we were starting to clean cameras and I heard what I thought was an elephant making a vocal noise down the valley. Helge wasn't sure and I wouldn't be either with a non-Namibian native and we ran over to the river bend to see what was going on and yep... there were the elephants coming our way.
"Oh geez" I thought. But we just went about our business as usual. They were sure making a lot of noise, but I noticed earlier in the day one of the males appeared to have "woman issues" in the herd and was acting rowdy. I suspect it was him making all the noise.
Maybe 15 minutes later when I was dusting my camera off with my air rocket Helge shouted at me to be quiet. I just freeze and drop my rocket and laid my camera down and I quickly stood up near the truck seat and proceeded to watch these huge elephants and their shadows just roll across the Huab River bed under a full moon. This image will never leave me. Its amazing how quiet elephants can be. I never even knew they were close till Helge said something.
At that point, I truly had enough fun with elephants for one day and was happy to see them wander upstream away from us, especially this late in the night. The way they were moving told me they were not going to be coming back during the night again for another visit and were on the move.
I never sleep in a tent in Namibia now and always sleep under the stars in my sleeping bag so I can easily run to the semi-safety of a tree or mountain side if need be.
What a wild day! All of this trouble and work to take a few photos for a magazine! But one can't decent photos if there isn't a certain degree of risk involved.
The next morning was also pretty amazing for photography too. We woke up to this nice morning view when he hiked up a similar sized mountain as seen in the picture to continue the photo shoot. The river in the picture is the Huab
So there is my elephant story! I'm so happy the truck and Helge and I are in one piece and that everything worked out for Denive too. I hope you enjoyed the photos and elephant story!
Cheers,
Aaron
