water for elephants (balule nature reserve, kruger national park)

A very handsome impala.

Trying to get a grasp of how important the trunk of an elephant is for its survival.

Elephants eat for almost 18 hours every day!

These two adolescent males around 15-20 will soon be joined by two more males about their age and a big wrestling match will ensue in the dam's reservoir.  Wouldn't have believed that could be true when I was taking this picture.

Just getting started.

These guys were very close to the vehicle--you can see a piece of the car in the lower right hand side of the frame.

During this battle I became worried that one of the elephants may hurt each other.  It reminded me of the saying, "Its all fun and games until someone looses an eye".

This picture shows how hard they were hitting each other.

These are the four participants of the rumble.

There are two elephants in this picture, but the water is pretty muddy.  Eventually, a snout stuck out of the water and the guy on bottom took a breath.

We're not sure if there are three or four elephants in this picture.  There were a lot of tusks, trunks, and legs being thrown around.

One of the guides said this was the best elephant sighting he has watched.  It certainly was ours!

A family of waterbuck came down to the dam to watch the elephants play and drink some water.  They were incredibly wary of crocodiles in the water and approached very slowly before drinking.

This doesn't seem appropriate, but it is probably the funniest picture we took on the trip.  I don't think there was any grabbing, but it is tough to tell.

It is always interesting to see animals make mistakes--especially ones as big as elephants.  This guy lost traction in the mud and his hind quarters slipped out from under him.  His buddy backed off and let him stand up.

They are like bodybuilders getting greased up for the show.

Sunset

These are the most revered of all animals in the game-tracking world.  Leopards are the most difficult to track and locate.  One walked through the whole section of reserve--18 km--one night while we were sleeping.  This is a juvenile male that is just over one year old.  He made a kill a few nights before and our guides had been scouring the area looking for him.  We were very lucky!

You can see that the leopard begins to disappear with only a few blades of grass left between him and us.  Imagine if he were two feet to our right or laying down--we would never see him.  Right now he's only 10 feet from the road.

This mother lion called Limpy is not as shy--she doesn't mind people coming to visit.  This was the second drive we were able to see her.

She sleeps most of the day and even part of the night.  Soon she'll rise and begin to chase down prey to feed her two cubs.