When we got on the saddle, we had to walk up to this extremely tall platform so we could hop on Jake's back - he was our elephant on the walk and he was the biggest one out there! Our trainer Lovemo, was teaching us about the elephants and was telling us that Jake was 28 years old but that he wouldn't stop growing until he was about 35 years old and he was already 4 tons!! They live until 60 or 70 years in the wild since they have no natural predators - and until about 100 years in captivity since they eat so much better. We also found out that elephants are one of the few animals that will mourn the loss of a family member - or a member of their pack! It's things like this that show how much animals truly feel and understand what is going on so it makes us so mad that people kill animals - especially poachers.
They are such smart animals! Lovemo was showing us how they listen to verbal commands so they don't need any sort of lead to guide them in the direction they need to go!
The female elephant that was following right behind us had her 3 year old baby with her and he is just now starting to be trained so he had a trainer riding him. When we stopped a couple times he screamed at his momma for milk and she wasn't a huge fan since he is starting to get his tusks and he will jab her with them when he nurses! Lovemo was telling us that the male elephants will nurse until they are about 6 or 7 years old but they should stop at about 4 or 5 years old. He said like in humans, the boys are bratty and needy so they will nurse longer haha
Jake kept ripping huge branches off of trees as we were walking and he would carry them in his trunk and eat along the way! I guess that's Africa's fast food ;) Lovemo said that elephant trunks have about 100,000 muscles in them so they can tear apart trees like its nothing! They also use their tusks to break the bark as they pull with their trunk (kind of like a knife). Below is a picture of one of the babies with his little tusks!
When we got back to the camp, we all got to give our elephants a treat! We could either tell them to "trunk up" and throw it in their mouth, or "trunk down" and they would take it in their trunk and put it in their mouth that way!
All the treats that fell on the ground were vacuumed up the warthogs! They are wild, but the sure know where the food is! The staff at The Elephant Camp take them away from the elephants to give them some food before they head over to pick up the scraps, otherwise they would be at our feet waiting for a hand out! When they were done eating in the bush, they would run over and pick up the treats on the ground and it was so funny how most of them would bend their front legs to get closer to the food! They sure are funny looking!
We were SO excited to see Sylvestester the cheetah at the end of the elephant ride! He had his eye on some water buck across the creek!
When we got back to our camp, we freshened up and headed to the lodge where everyone that is staying at the camp hangs out before dinner. We grabbed a glass of South African wine - which is probably our new fav! It's SO good and I hear that its pretty affordable! Definitely our kind of vino!! ;)
At dinner, we got to sit at a vineyard table for the first time so we got to sit with some of the friends we made while we were there - a sweet older couple from Atlanta, Georgia and these two "mates" (love how they talk!) who were on a guys trip after one of them had run a marathon in Durban. They are all so interesting and SO much fun! The older couple from Georgia have done so much traveling (we kind of want to be just like them) and are huge scuba divers! Their stories are fascinating! Our Aussie friends are a hoot!! They have done their fair share of traveling and we found out Jon is a huge animal lover too so we ended up showing each other photos of our furry babies at home!
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