The ‘unspoilt’ country where an elephant knocked on my door
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There’s a knock from outside my safari lodge. ‘Hang on a second,’ I call out as I skip wonkily towards the door with one shoe on, the other dangling from my hand. It seems my porter, Gibres, has arrived to walk me to dinner a few minutes early. I pull open my front door. Then I drop my shoe.
![[African Elephant family in Wildlife]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/GettyImages-1193572460.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=509)
Rather than finding Gibres on my patio, I’m greeted by an African elephant staring back at me. Her three infants continue to munch on the saplings in my garden, indifferent to my appearance, but she’s as startled as I am. Protective of her young, she raises her trunk towards me and lets out a trumpet blast.
![[Amazing close up of a huge elephants group crossing the waters of an African river]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/GettyImages-1424280907.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=509)
Although my lodge at Baines River Camp in Zambia opens onto unobstructed views across the crocodile-infested Zambezi River all the way to Zimbabwe, it’s just a two-minute walk from the dining room. Accordingly, I’d been a little resistant to the rather colonial idea of having a porter walk me to dinner each evening.
Our discussion has since been rendered moot, but Zena, the lodge manager had explained at check-in why it’s compulsory: ‘There’s recently been a drought, so — because we water our gardens to keep them lush and green — we do get a lot of nighttime visitors.’.
Fortunately, I’m delighted with my impromptu garden party and — satisfied that I mean neither her nor her calves any harm, as I film them on my phone through the crack of the door — Jumbo goes back to decimating the verdant trees beside my patio.
The elephant population in the Lower Zambezi National Park is buoyant. Floating down the titular river in my canoe, I see large groups of them merrily wading across the waterway from Zambia to Zimbabwe and back, blasting fountains of water into the air as if they’ve not a care in the world.
