Tembe Elephant Park is a Big 5 park which lies in northern Kwa-Zulu Natal on the Mozambican border. It is home to some of the last "big tusker" elephants in the continent, so we thought it was definitely a place to check out. A big tusker is an elephant whose tusks weigh in excess of 45kg, and with more than 250 elephants in the park, we were sure to get some good sightings.
Tembe is home to the biggest tusker of them all - iSilo. So big is iSilo, he even has his own Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Isilo.Tembe, where you can like him or not. For your own safety, it's probably best to like him, as with tusks approaching 3 metres in length, he could certainly do some damage.
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| Here is iSilo - as we didn't see him "in the flesh", a return trip to Tembe is on the cards for 2014. Want to join us? |
Accommodation was in a very cool safari tent, nestled in the bush. The main area had an outdoor restaurant, swimming pool and central fire at night where you could sit and have a quiet drink and re-live some of your game drive experiences. In our case, the drink was always noisy as William couldn't leave the fire alone!
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| The main camp area |
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| The balcony outside our tent. |
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| Fire starter... |
There were both morning and evening game drives with some amazing sightings in both. Lion are more prevalent in the cool of the morning before they wander off to sleep in the heat of the day. We followed 3 lionesses for more than an hour - huge animals, they had many scars and battle wounds each. They got quite close to the vehicle, but were obviously a little unsure and warily skirted around us to get to the waterhole.
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| Apparently the impala in the background had little to fear, despite the circling of the 3 lion - they are just too fast. |
We saw plenty of elephant, and had the following close encounter with a big boy which left us all with somewhat elevated heart rates.
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| Hang on…what's this? |
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| I might just get a little closer... |
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| Mmmmmm. |
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| This is the last photo I dare take before he lifted his trunk over the top of the car to get a good sniff (at least, I think that's what he was doing??) |
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| After what seemed an eternity of holding our breath while the elephant decided what to do about us, he sidled past the car to move onwards. A collective sigh of relief and a lot of nervous giggling was released by all of us! |
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Were we nervous? Hell yes. Recent emails from friends over here demonstrated an interaction with an elephant in a Maputoland reserve not far from here that went wrong. Ouch.
Luckily, a drinks stop was on the agenda after this little adventure! Being on the border of Mozambique, SImon and I decided to indulge in some rather tasty Mozambican brewing efforts. William also managed to sneak in his first ever can of coke which he claimed to enjoy. Shame.
I could go on and on with the photos as we just had so many good sightings….
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| One of the big tuskers we saw at the waterhole. |
…Tembe was a fantastic experience. Being a little beyond the price range of most locals, there were plenty of visiting Europeans which somehow managed to put us in snap happy tourist mode. On the final day, we went home via the 4x4 tracks to Mahlasela Pan - a fantastic hide with a permanent waterhole and 24hour webcam. Check it out http://www.tembe.co.za it really is live!
