Elephants

Last weekend I went to Dedza for the second time, and on Saturday MacPharlen with Dana treated me to day at the wildlife reserve in Liwonde (3 and 1/2 hours South of Lilongwe). They had gone two weeks before and said that they drove around the park for 7 hours, searching and searching for elephants, but the whole day they only spotted one in the distance, barely visible to the naked eye.

This time, luck was on our side. We saw herds of elephants including several small babies (they still must have weighed a couple hundred pounds each, small is a relative term). There was even a scary moment when one large elephant decided we were too close and started charging in our direction after giving us a good loud warning cry with her truck and tusks in the air. MacPharlen manuevered their little Toyota Corolla with stunning dexterity and we left that side of the park to the elephants. The elephants were the unanimous favorite, but we also saw hippos, crocodiles, gazelles, baboons, monkies, warthogs, waterbucks, and many birds including an eagle.

Although elephants are certainly not harmless, hippos (not lions) are responsible for the most human deaths attributed to Africa's large animals. Those seemingly sluggish round shiny bodies weighing up to 3 and 1/2 tons, are actually very swift. Hippos can run up to 40 miles an hour and they are aggresive, a fact which is both impressive and frightening. In the Shiri River, hippos frequently overturn small boats enabling the crocs to feast on who or whatever rode inside. Apparently this senario was so common that small fishing boats were outlawed on the Shiri River. Even so during our drive through the park we saw a couple small boats with fishermen casting their nets on the River. Perhaps for some having fish to sell outweighs the risk of crocodile attacks.