29th December, 2021

Rennie will write of our Christmas holiday, but during it we had the pleasure of visiting Kumana National Park and the privilege of taking Rennie’s Mum and our friends-like-family Martin, Niki and young son Adam on their first ever safari.

High on the list of hopeful sightings was elephant in the wild and we weren’t to be disappointed.  Two hours after arriving we came across another 4×4 coming in the opposite direction, and on the drivers stopping to compare notes through their windows we learned that they were beating a retreat having been chased by an elephant not far down the track.  After briefly continuing, our driver decided that discretion was the better part of valour and we turned round too but it wasn’t long after that we had our first sighting anyway; the magnificent fully grown adult coming out of the undergrowth as shown in the image above.

For an extended period we kept each other company down the track at a respectful distance, but close enough to experience the majesty of one of these largest of mammals.  At one point we went ahead to a bird observation tower and the only place in the national park where it is permissible to alight from a vehicle, in order to watch the elephant pass.  After a brief photo opportunity where Misa and Emilka climbed on to the roof of our 4×4 we realised that the elephant was upon us and there was no time for Rennie’s Mum to safely climb the stairs out of the way.  She therefore hopped in to the cab and our driver whisked her away until the elephant had sauntered past, whereupon she was brought back!

We saw plentiful other wildlife too, a glimpse of which you will find in the photos – and had a fantastic surprise as we were driving to the exit at sunset. More on this in the next blog post.  Nobody, first-timers or not was about to have a day they’d forget.

Steve