No Lions and Tigers and Bears... but ELEPHANTS!

Just a warning..  On this page i tried to include short videos... some worked and other didn't so please hang in there.   They might not be good and they may be out of order.  The uploading functions work differently from Africa than from the States...

So we left the area where we usually had seen lots of giraffe and zebra 

and drove a long time through the more desolate area... seeing nothing but a monkey

or baboon once in a while...  When all of a sudden the guide said, 

"Stop".. look there is an elephant." 

All she saw was this big dark spot off in the distance.

But then we saw more of him....He looked like a giant rock
sticking up out of the greenery.

He seemed to be moving closer and then we saw....

HIS FACE....looking right at us!

 He kept moving closer until he lifted his trunk and
started charging towards the car!  The guide yelled, "Go".
I was yelling, "No STOP" because i wanted to get a better
picture.. but our driver took off and drove quite aways down the
road.  Everyone was frightened but i have to say... I was in the back
of the car and didn't feel frightened... just sad that i didn't get the
picture of him charging with his trunk up! It is certainly in my memory though.

We stopped once we got far enough away and from the back window i took his picture....with the zoom.  He is quite far away here.... but you can see how big he is!
He seemed taller than a bus!  Once he walked away from us.. we backed up to see where he had gone and then we spotted him off to the right.

Sorry these were taken through the back window..

I gave Rachel my camera because she was sitting on the right side ....

And these are the shots she got!  

LOOK AT THE SIZE OF HIS TRUNK!


As we are watching the elephant a car comes up behind us and stops.
We think because they see the elephant about 30 feet from their car. 
But we learned later that they only stopped because they saw us stopped. 
They didn't realize they were in danger.. 
From the following clip you can see that they are. 



Rachel made great fun of me shouting "I'm taking a video
picture!"  HAHAHAHA but as you can tell we were 
all rather excited..  (ok i was the loudest since the mic is
in the camera i'm holding)

                                     After this the car slowly made its way up to us

and told us what had happened from their perspective.

and then we moved on.....So happy that we had all seen an elephant! 

What a great day!!!!  

But we hadn't driven too much farther and Chris spotted 

this "little" elephant off in the distance.  About 100 yards from us!  

This is her, zoomed a little closer.  WOW... 2 elephants in
one day.. now we were really happy.  You hardly ever
see the elephants at Akagera...so we were tickled
to be so fornutate.  We had all been praying that we would.....and we
so thankful..

But then we saw more

and more!  

Alright... in this video you hear me really get frustrated.  (sorry) I am sitting in the back

of the car with windows that don't roll down so almost all of these pictures

have been taken through tinted windows..... In this video when we begin to see

TONS (literally) of elephants I get a little crazy.. please forgive me but it was 

just too cool to miss on camera... and when i handed the camera to Chris to try

and shoot from an open window it was too hard to refocus. The camera doesn't let you zoom in and out while you are videoing... but at least you can see some of the parade! We couldn't believe what we were seeing!

The African male voice you hear on the video is our driver, Ada! He was so excited, too.

And in this one you can see the parade... hear Rachel counting and Ada 

still exclaiming about what we are seeing.

Mommy and baby ahead of her. 

Just too bad these were all through the tinted glass... Rachel has some great shots that she took with her beautiful camera!  She kept telling us not to worry.. that she would share her pictures!   That will be great!! 

Well, ok folks.. this has taken way to long with little results so 

I am not sure what you are going to see on your end...  

All I know is that we were blessed to see at least 35 elephants 

and to watch them and go crazy because we saw them!  

Chris and Rachel were so fortunate... and I'm so happy 

they were able to have such a great day! 

After we left the big herd.... about 10 minutes later there 

was one lone elephant walking by itself towards the others.... 

We were like " oh.. another elephant"... but had that been 

the only one we saw-- we'd have gone nuts! 

Seeing these huge creatures in the wild was truly a gift.

Thank you Lord, for giving us this gift of seeing

your creations free to roam or 

even free to charge 

right at us! 

What a day!  ( oh,,..wait-- it isn't over) 

To be continued!  

love,

margie