“On our way back to camp after an early evening drive after dinner we encountered another, medium sized, and very relaxed, herd of elephants. While we passed them they hardly glanced at us… A few minutes later we ran into yet another herd of elephants with exactly the same reaction. We watched them for a while and eventually drove on. When we eventually got back to the camp we went to the bar to get a nice cool drink when we noticed that a small herd of elephants….was positioned in between the bar and my tent! I waited for 20 minutes and when the staff thought it was safe enough they walked me to my tent. By now it was almost 09.30 pm and I really needed a shower to get rid of the dust and at my tent, I quickly jumped under the outside shower.

To my surprise suddenly in front of my shower, in the river bed, a small herd of waterbuck with a lovely youngster walked passed, hardly paying attention to me. But even more exciting was, whilst I was showering, I thought I heard a Pels Fishing Owl calling in the distance…not being sure of this I got out of the shower, shown with my torch light and saw crocodile eyes lighting up left and right, but then, right in front of me, in the huge Sycamore fig tree in the river bank, there it was sitting; a full grown adult Pels Fishing Owl looking at me whilst I was showering! Its eerie but unmistakable call being carried over the river…

I dried myself, made a nice cup of tea in my tent and prepared to go to sleep.

But that was not the end of it! Just as I had turned off the lights I heard hyenas calling and coming closer. The elephants, which were still close to my tent were trumpeting and chasing them away, clearly not amused by their close proximity. It became a cacophony of sounds and noises when they caught an impala (found out the next morning) and were fighting, calling and giggling over the spoils of that evening!

Finally around midnight the bush quieted down and the only sound to be heard was the distant calling of a baboon warning his family for an approaching leopard…”