Tembe Elephant Park

After 8 months of living and working in South Africa, we have finally been on a safari and it was amazing! Last Friday we drove 5.5 hours north to Tembe Elephant Park which is on the border of Mozambique.  It was really hot when we got there and we had to take a 4x4 safari truck to the camping/lodge area after parking our car.  We were greeted by wonderful staff members who sang for us and carried our bags to our tents which had 4 beds, a toilet, and a shower.  We weren't exactly roughing it over the weekend!  After settling in we had a delicious lasagna lunch before going out on our first game drive.  Carlos was our guide/driver who was extremely knowledgeable and quite entertaining.  In our truck were three other people, two from Joberg and one ironically enough from Kloof.  The lady from Kloof was hilarious the whole weekend and made teased me when I misidentified a tree as a giraffe but I made up for it by spotting a huge elephant right in front of our truck when we came around a corner.  It was so exciting to see our first elephant that close to the truck and we acted like little kids again smiling and snapping photos.  After the elephant we saw tons of impala and nyala, which are both like deer and got rather boring after a while, giraffes in the distance and a mongoose.  Carlos told us about lala (sleep in Zulu) palms which have liquid in their branches that can turn into wine.  Apparently the elephants love to eat/drink them before they fall asleep/pass out!  After the game drive, we had dinner where our tables were decorated with flags from the countries people were from on them.  Most of them were South Africa but ours was the USA of course and there was one other one that we didn't know.  For dinner we had warthog, chicken, and veggies which was all delicious in addition to butternut squash soup and dessert.  

On Saturday we got up really early and had a light breakfast before going out on our morning game drive where we saw a bunch more impala and nyala.  We also saw giraffe, rhino, leopard, and elephant footprints which were interesting to see.  We stopped for coffee and tea where we could see the border of Mozambique in the distance.  We then left for the second part of the morning drive which was awesome because we saw 2 lion really close to our truck (one which yawned and I got a picture of it) and a herd of elephant who were playing in the lala palms.  They were ripping them down and eating them right near us.  There were young ones and adults which made for great pictures.  We spent an extra hour watching the elephants in addition to seeing African water buffalo take a mud bath.  We drove back, had breakfast, and relaxed until lunch and our evening game drive.  During the night drive we saw some zebra, which our boss Hannah was really excited about, and some birds and trees that the other people in our truck were excited about but not us.  We took some group pictures at the sunset and saw an elephant that our guide Carlos said was in heat because he could smell it from a distance which was pretty amazing.  For dinner we had broccoli soup, impala, chicken, and veggies which was again delicious.  

It rained overnight which made us think that we weren't going to be able to see any animals or go out the next morning but we were able to see some like a herd of elephant in the distance.  It rained for a little bit on the ride but it stopped after a couple of minutes which we were happy about.  On our way back, we saw a bunch of giraffes up close which was really cool.  We also saw a suni which is a really rare/small antelope.  After eating breakfast and packing up, we drove back to our car and saw warthog which we hadn't seen before.  It was an awesome weekend and even though we didn't get to see any rhino, we saw a ton of elephant and most everything else!  

Elephant Fact: Tembe is home of 3 out of the 40 tuskers in Africa.  Tuskers are HUGE elephant whose one tusk weighs 50 kg (110lbs).  Unfortunately we didn't see any of these three but we did see some massive Dumbos!!