Sights and Insights
Most of the pictures in this gallery are from a safari in Entabeni Safari Reserve a couple of hours Northeast of Johannesburg, South Africa. The featured image is of a bull elephant urging our Land Rover to back up. Once we’d gotten back far enough he downed a tree, laid it across the track and signaled his followers to cross.
While descending in a 10-seater Land Rover from the high plateau in South Africa’s Entabeni Safari Conservancy to the bushveldt where most of the animals live, we spotted this elephant climbing the steep canyon walls. These are all pictures of the same animal. I’ve included them in descending order to provide a sense of the elephant in relation to the steep canyon.
The bottom picture shot with an 18mm focal length is included to provide scale. The top picture was shot at a 250mm focal length and cropped to get in closer to the animal. Turns out Elephants are great climbers. I guess that’s why Hannibal attempted to use them to cross the Alps during the Punic Wars in the Second and Thrid Centuries BCE. (Most of Hannibal’s elephants did not survive the hostile Alpine climate).
