Remember When???

I'm starting today with my "Remember When???". Like I said in my previous post, this is a story about one of the times we went to the Kruger National Park.

Above you will see Malelane Gate, which is the one we usually go in through coming from Johannesburg. I could just picture myself there right now......boy is it making me homesick :)

It was early in the morning and we piled into the car and set off to see the wildlife. Now remember the gates open everyday at around 6am, and you just drive out of the camp. In between the camps it's just wildlife so you are NOT to stop your car and get out for any reason. If you come into contact with monkeys, you need to make sure the windows are up etc. Just certain precautions you need to take.

So we are driving around and we see an elephant up ahead and really close to the side of the road. We figured this was the perfect chance to get a good picture.
Dad pulls up right next to the elephant. The elephant is just standing there eating off the tree. Let me tell you, he was HUGE, but it was so amazing to be able to be within arms reach of such a powerful animal.
So we are sitting there, the car is still running, and my stepmom is trying to get a photo taken. For some reason she can't get it to work, so she's messing with the camera and we hear the elephant make some weird noise and see his ears flap. NOW we're thinking "ok this is not good, he's getting annoyed, just take the darn photo already". LOL
She is still messing with the camera when the elephant suddenly lets out this loud shriek, starts waving the ears and turns towards the car............OMG, I quickly put my head down between my legs, my oldest brother is yelling in the back of the car "GO GO GO GO GO GO GO", and I just see the camera go flying, my dad slams the car into gear and we take off flying down the road. LOL

I've never been so scared in my life, I honestly thought we were going to get squished by a huge elephant.
So anyway, we keep driving and after a while we just start laughing at how funny everyone's reaction was.

We go a few miles down the road and we see a whole herd of elephants crossing the road. The cars are stopped RIGHT there by them. IT's common to stop your car and have the whole herd pass right in front of you. I guess my dad wasn't quite over the shock of what had happened because we ended up watching the elephants crossing from about a mile away LOL
All the other cars are right there by them and we are the only vehicle stopped far behind LOL

That whole day, everytime we saw elephants it was WAY from a distance and never up close and personal like the first one :)

If you want to see some more Kruger Park elephants, be sure to go HERE. These photos were posted by a visitor to the park :)