Desert Elephant

Day 14: Namibia

We saw the Desert Elephants!! I couldn’t decide what to blip so went with the funniest moment....two elephants eating the same branch! We were incredibly lucky, according to our guide, as they often have to drive/walk a long way to find them and we came across them within 20 mins! In total, we saw 11 elephants and spent over 1.5 hours watching them. Definitely the highlight of the trip so far. It was an amazing experience. We sat in the game drive bus and the elephants surrounded us, carrying on with their lives, completely ignoring us.

There are only 120 Desert Elephants left in Namibia, and 25 are found in this area (Brandberg). They are adapted for the rocky desert with longer front legs, larger feet and are generally thinner than African elephants. They can climb up rocks to get to the springs hidden in the mountain side (see the extras to see the type of terrain).

As Namibia has had a drought for 4 years now, no baby elephants have survived after being born due to their mothers not having enough milk. We did see 4 young elephants today, who were around 3-4 years old. The park rangers don’t feed the baby elephants as there are many tribes people living in the area and they do not want elephants to associate being fed with humans, as the elephants will then knock down houses etc to get to food.

This country continues to surprise us and today was no exception! We drove on to outside the Etosha National Park this afternoon, where we will spend the next few days.