03.12.2018

03.12.2018 13days at buffelsdrift

After breakfast we headed down to camp and started with the elephant enclosure which was espacially dirty today.

Next we had to fill up bags with elephant shit so we could use it to plant some trees with later. Before that we quickly made our way to the lions to check the fence and cut some plants outside the fence.

On the way back we grabbed a bunch of little sprouts in flower pots and with our bags of shit we went up to our tents.

Her we started to dig holes in a little ground patch outside my tent. We filled them with elephant poop and put the little tree saplings in it. It took us a while to get through the ground and plant everything nice and tidy. Also the smell of shit was now in the air, especially right infront of my tent.

Back at camp we prepared the elephant food and then went out to track the cheetas.

We had a later lunch today, but it was alright since dinner would be late aswell because there was a night drive planned for this evening.

We had no electricity during lunch so we had cold spaghetti.

On the way back to camp we met up with Josef. He is one of the rangers taking care of the elephants and we stayed with him for the afternoon.

I was really excited already because I knew these elephants were more tame and you could stand close to them. They are kind of the last animal on my last I havent encountered yet.

So We walked towards the elephants, they are still growing but are already gigantic, and larissa told me to give her my bag. I did, but was a bit confused why then Josef pulled me closer to the elephants and told me to stand and turn around.

With a simple word from josef: "Hug!" The elephants came up behind me and with raped their massive trunks they wrapped around me. Around my arms, shoulders and head while larissa and lea laughed and took pictures. These long trunk noses were enormous and really rough.

It felt like sandpaper and even though the elephants were behaving "gentle" all of my sunburn skin was rubbed off and red. That was really amazing.

We continued to walk with them, they knew it was monday so they would get special food but josef had closed the fence towards the exit. So all 3 of them stood there for a while until the turned around and came back to josef.

Josef led them to a wooden balcony were we could stay on top and be almost on the same height as them. Josef fed them a bit until one guest whi had booked the elephant experience came along. With him we brushed the elephants as good as possible, petted them and gave them something to drink.

Then we went further up and fed them some fruit and took some more cool pictures.

It was really an amazing experience.

Before we went back we went to the chef Andrice. We had decided that we wanted to give something to Mariné. Her dream is to travel so we wanted to get other volunteers together and donate a bit of money to help her finance her travel since it is really expensive for workers here.

He thought it was a great idea and he would help us in getting everything in order with sending the money and the bank accounts. Right now we just need to contact some more volunteers.

Back at our tents we showered and got ready for the night drive. Mariné came to pick us up at 19:00 it was raining a bit but got better later.

We drove out to the reserve and had dinner. It got dark quite fast so we jumped in the car. One person was always responsible for the spotlight and we all searched for any animals.

We saw zebra, giraffe, different antilopes, a bunch of animals through the night. We drove around 3hours and kept switching the light. Holding it was pretty cool since it produced a lot of heat and it was nice to warm your fingers.

Back at our tents we quickly went in the warm beds.