The "Painted" Elephants of Addo

Recently we had the most wonderful elephant encounter in Addo Elephant National Park.


Despite its name I never take elephant sightings for granted in Addo as it can be difficult to find them in the dense thickets that cover most of the Park.

However on this particular late morning in the last week of November we had an abundance of these stately mammals, in an array of earthly colours, enjoying the Harpoor waterhole.

I noticed this "painted" lady as she approached one of the muddy waterholes and she went ahead and gave herself a new coating of muddy water.......
 

 

 

However, she wasn't satisfied with the texture or colour of the mud so she then kicked vigorously to stir up a whole lot more......

 

Minutes passed, elephants moved on and then more came in. I lost count of how many elephant we saw in total.

Then this handsome bull came up the slope towards us and that muddy waterhole.....

He gave us a great demonstration of how a mud shower should be really done.

ahhhh, there's nothing that beats a fresh coat of paint / muddy water!

There were lots of other antics going on as well, of course......

Eventually and reluctantly we dragged ourselves away..........

After lunch, we went out again looking for more animals and came across another small herd of elephant, re-spraying from white to ochre .......

We didn't find the lion but I certainly got my elephant "fix" that day :)