1 December - Game Drive

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.

Elephant femur! Look how big the hip socket is! Really heavy too

Camp and Lodge. Perfect for watching the animals drinking from the water hole

Impala

Female Kudu

The bush

A bull elephant completely tore through those beams trying to get to the water tank