It was our first evening at the Karatu Simba Lodge in Tanzania. This was our base lodge for the game drives to shores of Lake Manyara in Manyara National Park.
This lodge and pool back onto the outskirts of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This photo was taken in late evening in the “backyard” of the lodge.
I didn’t know this at the time, but it turned out that we witnessed the largest gathering of elephants at Lake Manyara; larger than in any other game viewing of our entire trip, which included major National Parks in Kenya and Tanzania.
The entire vast Ngorongoro Conservation Area is dotted with ancient volcanos. This volcanic ash affects the soil composition and the color of entire area. For this reason the soil around the lodge has a grayish tone to it as opposed to the typical African dark orange clay color.
It was late evening before dinner and we were gathered at the observation deck sipping martinis. A very large herd of elephants approached the small pond beyond the barbed wire fence for their evening drink.
Gulping my nearly-full martini, I rushed down the crooked narrow steps of observation deck to my room and ran back near the limit sign by the fence while mounting the 400mm lens on camera and hooking it up to the monopod.
There were many mature elephants with long and sometimes asymmetric tusks blocking my capture moment with just few of them. Soon other herds came down to the watering pond and after their fill, they began socializing with their friends, neighbors and relatives.
Now about a dozen mature elephants were greeting each other with their trunks, reaching out to touch each other as their way of giving a hug. So when I focused on those gatherings, all I could see were long tusks pointing at each other like spears with curved handles.
It was almost dark and I was getting desperate for a shot that would mark the evening. Fortunately, the elephants slowly ended their evening gossip and, following their matriarch, started to leave the watering hole.
The larger elephant in the picture is the matriarch, starting to leave and probably her oldest daughter, caught up with her mom in a very respectful and obedient way, to lead the herd back to their grounds in the park.
I took few shots of them as they left, as a last resort to make sure I had captured something meaningful, but did not have very high hopes that I would have anything to show the folks that were getting drunk on the observation deck.
Spending an hour watching a few dozen majestic gentle giants, going through their evening watering hole ritual at less than one hundred feet away was worth missing out on few martinis.