This morning, we are leaving Euphorbia to head back to South Africa. We are going to miss this place. It’s a beautiful lodge, and Mashatu Game Reserve is a great place to see wildlife and different types of landscapes.

Just because we are leaving doesn’t mean we didn’t have a morning safari drive. We left early with Tips so we had time to meander on our way to the airport. It was a beautiful morning and a great drive. ESPECIALLY because we saw so many elephants!

First, here are a couple of photos of the red-billed hornbills just outside our room. This one was hopping around on the patio and looking in the window.

He flew back up in the tree right next to the patio and joined another hornbill. All this just right outside a window.

Now it was time to say goodbye to everyone at Euphorbia and start the drive to the airport. At the first river crossing, we saw a herd of elephants drinking water. There were more joining them from above.

Thus began an amazing safari adventure watching elephants. There were just so many of them! More and more kept coming down do the river from above. We just parked our truck and had a great time watching them.

If you like elephants you will love this post with all its elephant pictures…

This youngster looked so small next to the adults, but has a tusk already. I wonder how old it is?

He (or she?) looked so cute trotting out of the water while flapping his ears.

It’s interesting that this one has a broken tusk.

There were quite a lot of baby elephants with this large herd. This one came down with yet more elephants.

It looked like several independent herds were joining together here at the water. They would come down in small herds to drink and then leave along the same path. We were parked right here along the riverbed. They didn’t seem to mind at all, just walking right past us in a looonnnnng line. Here are some of them from that line. You can see how there are still other elephants joining from across the river.

They always made sure the baby elephants had adults around them.

This cute baby stopped to throw dirt on his/her back. Man of the elephants did that as they left the water. It helps keep them cooler.

If you look at the above and next photo, you’ll see that they are digging into the dirt with their foot to get to the cooler, damp dirt underneath. This is what they toss on their backs for cooling. This one is still digging and throwing more dirt on her head and back.

Yup, another youngster came down to the water.

This is a nice portrait of one of them…

And here is a front view of a different one.

After watching these wonderful elephants disappear into the distance, we started back on our trip to the airport. What a fantastic experience with the elephants!

Soon, under yet another Mashatu tree, we saw a herd of impalas eating the fruit. They looked at us, but didn’t run away.

Up in the tree, a baboon was eating…

In the more open area, we saw these two giraffes. .

And then, we saw another herd of elephants! This is about 30+ minutes after we left the previous large herd. I’m not sure if these are from that same group or not.

I included this photo to show how they eat those nasty thorny plants. It’s just crazy! I don’t know how they can stuff thorny branches into their mouths. But this baby just dug on into the brush, thorns and all. Yum!

Finally, our last wildlife before arriving at the airport – some zebras. It’s neat how they will rest their heads on each other.

Finally, we arrived at the Limpopo Valley Airport. It’s a small airport, but it works great for the area.

It ended up that we were the only passengers on our flight back to South Africa (and Mala Mala). That was very nice!

They give you snack boxes on the plane, along with a bottle of water. The boxes were good for a snack, with a good nut bar, protein bar, shortbread cookies and a couple of other things.

After we landed in South Africa, the pilots helped us with everything we had to do for customs/immigration. The airport we flew into was totally deserted, no other passengers. Apparently, they are normally closed, but they come in when a flight is landing/leaving. So, all the necessary people were there, but it was strange with no other passengers. It was actually a larger airport than we expected. The people were all very helpful.

After the process of re-entering South Africa, we got back on the same plane for another hour flight to Mala Mala Game Reserve. Still no other passengers on the plane with us.

This was a really stunning view out the plane window.

Finally, we arrived at the next airport for Mala Mala. We said goodbye to our wonderful pilots. Here, you can see them, along with our plane in the background.

Our new Mala Mala guide, Jacques, met us at the airport and brought us to Mala Mala Rattray’s, where we will stay for the next few nights.