After to long an absence, I finally have access to my laptop.  So lets pick up from the sharks.

I left Cape Town on the 3^rd and hooked up with Tommy (Tommy’s Desert Tours) and his family and headed for Damaraland.  The aim of the trip was to see the desert elephants.  We left on a Sunday at about 4:30 in the morning and set out for Damaraland.  We were going to start our search in the in the Aba-Huab river.

After a long, hot and dusty drive we reached our Camp at 12 in the afternoon.  We unhooked the trailer and headed off into the dry riverbed.  Once in the Aba-Huab we proceeded to look for tracks of four bull elephants that had been spotted in the vicinity earlier that morning.

 We slowly drove down the river constantly scanning for signs of elephants.  Nothing!  We looked for tracks, fresh dung and broken vegetation.  This carried on for three hours.  Three long hours of heat (my water had almost reached boiling point in its bottle.) and irritating mopane flies that had a habit of trying to crawl under human eyelids.  No amount of insect repellent kept them away.  Just as I thought we’d have to give up the search for the day, Tommy spotted an elephant standing in a clump of trees 20 metres away.  Perfectly hidden in the shade of the branches.  We almost drove past without spotting them.  Finally I had my elephants.  We had indeed found the four bulls!

We spent the next hour with the elephants as they made their way down to a water point for an evening drink.  Once they headed off after their drink we made our way back to camp.  The next three days were spent trying to find more elephants, but they remained elusive.  We found plenty of tracks and signs of the huge animals passing through but never sighted another single animal.  4 days 3 nights, 1 300 km travelled with the result of one hour spent with 4 bulls. I will be back. 

 Enjoy the images.