1 December
0 Miles
Gumare
Steph:
We woke up this morning thinking it
would be our last day in Gumare (and were kind of broken up about
it). BUT! Dave, a PCV also set up in Gumare, called in a favor and
asked his friend to take us on a game drive! Thys (Tase) picked us up
and drove us to the game farm he manages. We got a tour of their
lodge and base camp and then he drove us around the 9000hectare
property to look for animals. It was awesome. We saw impala, kudu,
oryx, steinbock, a tortoise, a black MAMBA (very dangerous) and some
beautiful country.
Thys told us some amazing stories about
the things he deals with on a daily basis. Basically, rich people
come to the farm to hunt for trophies. They'll stay at the lodge and
Thys takes them out on actual game drives, looking for animals to
shoot. They're very responsible about it and need permits to kill
however many of each animals. This particular piece of land is fenced
to keep animals in, but also to keep the free roaming cattle, donkeys
and horses out. It works pretty well for the most part, except for
one thing.
Elephants.
This area is full of them and they do
whatever they want to. They like this property because of the
guaranteed water. During the dry season Thys and his men have to
transport water from the closest bore hole for the game and
themselves. The elephants are smart though, they know where they keep
the big water tanks and regularly destroy and empty them out. The
workers will fix them and the elephants come back. The fences aren't
a problem because they just stomp right through them. It's amazing
how smart they are. Ready?
Fences are basically just wire with
wooden poles every few feet. The big supporting poles are about
10meters apart from each other and surround the whole compound. The
smaller poles are easy to fix, but the elephants know that if they
push over the big poles, the whole thing will just come down. So,
naturally, they go for those everytime they come in or out of the
property. Thys tried to outsmart them by planting the big poles in
blocks of concrete and then digging them into the ground. It worked
for a little while, until the elephants (mostly the lone bulls)
realized that all they had to do was grab the whole pole with their
trunks and just pulling the whole thing out (concrete and all).
Fences down everywhere. The next plan was clever, the humans decided
to do the same thing, except make the concrete slap bigger. Big
enough so that the elephant can't grab the pole without stepping on
the concrete. That way, if he wanted to pull it out, he'd be trying
to lift up his own weight. Impossible. That got the elephants for a
while. Not for long though, because instead of walking over the
poles, or lifting them out, they decided it was easier to just use
their trunk to slice them at the base! FAIL for the humans. So now,
the men had to, not only redo all the of the supporting poles, but
break all the huge concrete slabs, rip out the poles, rip out the
concrete and start from scratch. So now they just do the regular
fences and go around the perimeter every morning putting them back
up.
Haha! I love these stories and these
animals. Thys continued telling hilarious stories. It was pretty
great and the weather continued being beautifully cool and overcast.
We ended then night deciding to stay
one more day and going to bed early.
Good day.
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| Elephant femur! Look how big the hip socket is! Really heavy too |
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| Camp and Lodge. Perfect for watching the animals drinking from the water hole |
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| Impala |
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| Female Kudu |
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| The bush |
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| A bull elephant completely tore through those beams trying to get to the water tank |
