Elephant Hunt

Elephant Hunt

Some friends from the center here asked us to go on an elephant hunt.  So on New Years Day, we along with three families set out for Parc W in southern Niger.

The first thing you have to know is that Parc W is in French so of course they don’t simply say Park W.  They make it difficult by saying, “Parc du doub lay vee.”  Or, Parc double v, since W is two V’s together.  The other thing is they call it Parc W because the river forms a W on the north side of the park.  Not a real good marketing name but as we say, “Parc du doub lay vee” it is.

See the W?

Anyway, we took off for the park at 8am and had a flat tire in the truck we were riding in right around 8:45.  Seems like having a flat is an expected occurrence so with a lot of waiting around it was fixed and we were on our way again.  It is about 100 miles to the park from Niamey but the last 50 miles are bad dirt road so it took us 4 hours or so to get there.

Don't you just hate it when there is work to do
to have some guy just stand around with his hands in his pockets.

We checked into the 4 Star La Taboa Hotel at the park.  Not sure who is handing out hotel stars but they were quite generous with the La Taboa.  We paid our park fee, got a guide, and left immediately for an observation platform that was by a small river.  There were some crocodiles on the far bank and we saw a few DLT (deer like things) on the way but not much else.  We had lunch there, didn’t see any elephants, which is not unusual, and then the guide suggested we return to the hotel and come back out to look for animals at 4:30.  (Not seeing animals is not unusual at all.)

We did catch this DLT.  We are sending this photo into National Geographic.

At 3:00 we were awakened to the cry of “elephants.”  Half of us piled into and onto a car and we took off elephant hunting.  We found 5 of them close to the observation tower we had been to before.  I have to say that I have seen elephants before and at Disney’s Animal Kingdom they are “out in the wild” sort of.  These five were across the river, big as can be, and absolutely wonderful to watch.  We also saw large antelope horses, more deer, baboons, monkeys, buffalo deer, and some beautiful birds with brilliant colors. 

It was hard to get them to all look at the camera.

We returned to the hotel around 6, and had a delightful dinner outside in just perfect, not too hot and no dust in sight, weather.  Just a great day.

We started the next day a 6:30 am to look for lions and headed off into the park interior.  We drove around 35 miles on single lane, grass down the middle, path-like roads.  Maybe the lions saw us but we didn’t see them and in fact, we didn’t see much of anything but we did have a real hard ride.  Went back to the hotel and checked out then went to the observation platform again.  Nothing going on there so we had our bag lunch again and hung out on hard benches.  After a long time a guy came and said the elephants were across the river again down stream.  We drove there and saw three of them up close and personal.  It was an absolute treat. 

Oh, that feels so good.

Our 50th Anniversary Card

Left to drive home about 2 with two more cars in our caravan and at 3:15 we had our second flat, in another car.  The flat was quickly changed and off we went for another 10 miles and had another flat.  Tired, exhausted, not frustrated in the least, just thankful to be home and to have had a great trip to “Parc du doub lay vee.”  

All but three of our fellow hunters.