Elephants everywhere
Everybody loves elephants! We love them for the way they trundle through the bush, the mothers gently helping babies across rivers and through dangerous lion country. And for their amazing trunks which are strong enough to tear a huge branch from a fig tree, yet sensitive enough to pick a tiny plant from the ground. Elephants are great adaptors, and on your family safari might see them from Little Kwara Camp in the watery abundance of the Okavango Delta, or trudging through the shimmering Namibian desert from Doro Nawas Lodge. If you stay at Chiawa Camp on the Zambezi river in August you can watch them wallowing and using their trunks to hose themselves down after a long dry day in the bush, or even swimming out to an island, using their trunks as snorkels!
Elephant watching is one of the big treats you’ll enjoy on your family safari. Imagine yourselves sitting in your private open vehicle in Amboseli, with Mount Kilimanjaro as a backdrop, watching elephants emerging from the trees in twos and threes making their way down to a waterhole to drink until after half an hour fifty of these magnificent animals are gathered to drink and play. On an Africa Exclusive family safari no-one will rush you or crowd you – you can linger as long as you like just drinking in the sights and the atmosphere, building memories that will last a lifetime. Your private guide will tell you all you want to know about the elephants, and while you’re watching them a family of warthog could trot primly past, a flock of ungainly marabou storks may come in to land, and you might find yourselves being watched by a curious family of giraffes from behind the trees.
African elephants are immensely strong and can move surprisingly fast, so they must be treated with respect. But there are a few places where you can get close enough to touch them or even to ride them. This is usually where baby elephants have been orphaned and raised by people, as at Camp Jabulani in the Kruger where you can touch the elephants and hear them communicating in their low rumbles and ride them through the bush giving you an elephant’s eye view of the world. Daphne Sheldrick’s elephant orphanage in Nairobi is also a great place to see and we can arrange a special visit as part of your Kenya family safari if you sponsor one of the little orphans.
