The Elephant Show

We embarked on our safari early this morning, with our driver also tagging along. For whatever reason, the safari guys really seem to push the afternoon trips. We actually pulled over before entering the park where the guy asked if we really wanted to do it. Umm...yes? Our driver interpreted and said that yesterday afternoon/evening they saw 20-30 elephants. An hour later this number had jumped to around 50, then eventually became 300. As Nicole said, "It's as if our driver genuinely believes everything -- like he lives in a world where there are no lies."

Immediately after the statements about dozens hundreds of elephants, she and I were both skeptical. "He showed me pictures on his phone!," exclaimed our driver. Were they taken yesterday? Who knows. Were they taken from google image search? Maybe. Life needs a healthy dose of skepticism and Nicole and I live in a world where we are convinced everyone is trying to screw us. Despite the safari man's best efforts to convince us to not go in the morning, we saw 6-8 elephants immediately upon entering an open area in Kaudulla National Park.

 This is one of the cases where my videos are actually far better than my photos, which are not white-balanced correctly at all, but I post them here anyway so you can see the elephants until I have a chance to edit them. One positive about going in the morning? No other jeeps. The most we ever saw were two. And I had read in numerous reviews that if an elephant is spotted in the afternoon, there will be 30 jeeps parked in front of it. So even if there was a herd of elephants in the afternoon, there would also be a herd of jeeps.

I found the lack of other jeeps calming even if it meant seeing fewer elephants. As it was, we still got to see several up close including the male and female couple above. In addition to the elephants, we saw some monkeys, peacocks, buffalo, a fox, pelicans, and a monitor lizard. The first thing the safari guy pointed out was a chicken. Nicole and I looked at each other like, "Uh huh...it's going to be that kind of trip." But as you can see, it rapidly improved. As we reached the end of our safari, we were asked if we wanted to see the museum. We inquired what was in it.

"A 15 month old baby elephant and some snakes!," said our driver. Given that description, I was expecting to see a room with a live baby elephant where biologists were monitoring its health and making sure it was strong enough to be on its own. I did not picture this 19th century room of oddities with said 15 month old baby elephant in a vat of formaldehyde. There were a couple dead snakes in there as well as some deer skulls and a taxidermy rodent. As we were walking out, Nicole said, "Maybe they should have mentioned it was dead." I replied, "Maybe they shouldn't have said it was a museum." We have always been very snarky people. What can you do?

Now we have our last long drive ahead of us -- all the way back to Colombo. So for the next 4-5 hours, enjoy this video of two elephants trunking.