Vwasa Marsh Game Reserve

Forget everything you thought about elephants. The wisest and most intelligent of animals or cute like ‘Dumbo’. They’re aggressive and big and scary. We arrived at the game reserve in the early afternoon and no sooner had we taken the bags out of the car than the guide came rushing up: “sono sono” quickly quickly. We jumped in the truck and headed into the bush. Driving along with windows down, someone shouted “tsetse flies”. Frantic activity ensued, windows up and people hitting windows with hats, hands, shoes to try and kill the things. Unbelievably of all the travel jabs we’d had, there’s no inoculation for sleeping sickness which you get from the Tsetse fly (as we know well, ‘The Crescent’pub quiz goers).

Five minutes down the road we came across a herd of about thirty buffalo and about a dozen elephants. Elephants are huge. We were informed we would be safe in the Landrover, but there was one towering over us looking very pissed off at us disturbing its chill out time. “Slowly by slowly” murmured the guide, indicating we should drive on past it. When we were about four or five metres away, it suddenly charged towards us, ears flapping, trumpeting loudly. The guide calmly informed us that this was apparently a ‘false charge’; they will charge and turn back, charge and turn back. Still scary though - I’m sure there are times when they don’t turn back.

A few weeks earlier a couple of VSO volunteers were at the game reserve. They were walking away from their accommodation when a few elephants appeared from nowhere. Excited about the chance encounter, they whipped out the cameras. The elephants didn’t like it. One of the guys managed to climb up a tree. The other got chased round and round a tree. Eventually tiring of the game, the elephant knocked him down with its trunk and sat on the guy. He had to be flown home to Dublin with internal bleeding and lucky to be alive.

We slept in little huts by the lake made up of elephant-proof twigs that night. It was fantastic - we had our dinner and our guide told us we had to go to bed at 7.30 as the hippos come out to feed next to the huts at night.