Pongola Day Two... (Cheese Hates Me)

It has been 11 hours and 22 minutes since I woke up this morning... it has also been 11 hours and 22 minutes since my stomach ache started. Yes, this is a new personal record for me but I can’t really say I didn’t anticipate it. Last night, after returning to the cottage, the four of decided to make dinner consisting of pasta and vegetables baked in the oven with cheese. I knew that there was a chance the cheese would put me off, especially since I haven’t touched any dairy products since I left home. Using my impeccable logic I decided that if I did end up with a stomach ache it would occur during my sleep and wouldn’t bother me one bit... clearly I was mistaken. I am still trying to decide if the cheese pasta casserole was worth it... if this stomach ache breaks the 12 hour point it probably wasn’t.

The British vs Canadian feud also officially started last night with me being knocked for calling a single piece of pasta a “noodle”.  Apparently the word noodle only refers to the types of pasta that are long and stringy. My “lingo” seemed to bother one of the girls quite a bit more than it should have... therefore I am going to continue calling them noodles just for a good laugh.

Anyways, onto things that might actually matter. Today was the official start of my thesis research and we were up at 6:30am to get ready for when Heike picked us up in the Land Rover. The purpose of today was to familiarize ourselves with the largest herd of elephants (families A and B) as well as any bulls we came across. Using the ID kits that Heike prepared for us we were able to slowly but surely identified the main females in the herd and two bulls.  The ID kits are specific for the main elephants in the larger herd, each bull, and each member of the orphan herd. They consist of a basic drawn elephant head with a left and right side as well. Over the last two years Heike has manipulated these drawings to contain tusk width and length, notches in the tusks, the absence of tusks, as well as rips and tears present in their ears.

The first sighting of the elephant herd occurred at 9:40am after approximately an hour of driving to the opposite end of the Jozini Dam. Heike is very familiar with the ranging patterns of each herd so she strategically parked the vehicle in a location that overlooked the area the herd would be emerging from the brush. While we waited we noticed a family of hippo bobbing in the water reeds, there were 8 of them in total including a calf.

Twenty minutes later the herd broke out of the surrounding thicket and entered the floodplain and headed for the waters edge to drink. There were 52 individuals in all, two of them being mature bull elephants. Interestingly enough, aside from the current population control method in place (vasectomising the mature bulls) the newest and youngest member of the herd is just 4 weeks old. The sex of the newborn won’t be known until he/she is a few years older as identifying their sex is very difficult. There are even a few individuals aged between 3 and 5 that have yet to be properly sexed. We watched the herd until the last of them had disappeared back into the thicket.

Unfortunately there weren’t any independent bulls visible in the area so we drove around the dam to head off the main herd as they made their way through the bush. We viewed them along another road as well as once again on the floodplain. This third sighting was incredible as we witnessed two adolescent bulls interacting to establish the dominant individual. This behaviour went on for the majority of our viewing time. The elephants also took this time to mud and dust bathe. The younger calves could be seen kneeling in the mud and rubbing their trunks and faces into the muddy ground. Around 4:00pm we called it a day and after allowing the elephants to cross the road directly in front of us we headed back to camp.