The Kruger National Park is arguably the most popular national park in Southern Africa, it is home to thousands of elephants and on this day of our Walking South Africa JJa14 tour, we saw, in my (Adolf) opinion , most of them! Maybe that is an exaggeration, but our game drive that lasted 8 hours was full of elephant sightings, herds with babies, lone males roaming around, bachelors having a bit of a play fight, there where elephants around each and every corner.

On this day we entered at the Kruger at the Paul Kruger gate, just one of the many gates that the near two million hectare park has. Very early into our game drive we started seeing elephants, everyone was exited as this is one of the "must see" animals that anyone with an interest in Africa wants to see. The first elephant was a young bull, separated from the heard. Young bulls around the age of 18 years walk alone, being chased away from the heard by the matriarch because of rough teenage behaviour that none of the adults will tolerate and none of the youngsters will like.

This young bull was browsing on a nearby Mopane tree. He was not bothered with our presence, he just went about his daily routine of eating a few hundred kilograms of leaves and grass. He was standing quite close to the road, maybe 20 meters, and we were able to sit quietly and watch him as he stripped this Mopane tree of its smaller branches, twisting each branch in his mouth to remove the outer bark, the part of the branch he is interested in. It contains a lot of nutrients, and eating the bark of trees provide a much needed sustenance for each elephant.

We could see all the detail in his tough skin, the scratches on his tusks & the cuts on the ears. At this stage everyone was quiet and we got a new admiration for these gentle giants. We left him eating his food, giving him his rightful space. We were happy and this was only the first elephant sighting of the day!

  
Elephants have several distinctive features, the most notable of which is a long trunk, used for many purposes, particularly breathing, drinking and grasping food. Their incisors grow into tusks, which can serve as weapons and as tools. Elephants have large ears which they flap to control their body temperature. Very much like a radiator of a vehicle they circulate their blood through their ears which is cooled in this flapping motion.