An Afternoon at the Spa
Please enjoy this week’s blog via the recording or text below.
I return to my cottage after lunch and collapse on the bed hoping to grab a nap after our morning game drive. I have a couple of hours before my guide, Pilipili, and I head out again. I’m in that in-between zone of sleep and wakefulness when something calls me back. The afternoon is quiet in the heat. No sound of bird calls or animal rustling outside my door. I raise myself up on my elbows and peer through the screen trying to orient myself. An enormous red-brown head rises out of the thick grass. There is a huge bull elephant silently enjoying a mud bath directly in front of me. I didn’t realize I had a view of the far end of the water hole from my porch. I quickly slide my feet into a pair of sandals, grab my cameras, and race back to the main lodge.
I creep across the lawn and slip onto a chair a few yards from the electric wire that separates me from water hole. The bull hauls himself up from the depth of the wallow and casually saunters off into the trees. Refreshed, he looks like he has been dipped in chocolate from head to tail.
I wish I’d stayed after lunch for this show. As I review the few images I captured, I see movement out the corner of my eye. Coming down the path is Tim! (link to blog about meeting Tim) Is that Tim? No! it’s his doppelganger Craig, identifiable by his slightly shorter colossal tusks and a right-angled tear in his left ear. Craig and I face each other across the water hole. There is a pregnant pause, then he calmly proceeds to go through his entire spa routine right before my eyes.
Step one: Suck up a good slurp of mud
Step two: Spray over body—repeat
Step three: Carefully slide 6 tons of elephant into the bath
Step four: Ahhh … enjoy the soak
The entire process is soundless except for the splash when Craig sprays mud across his back. Unless you are looking, you would not know that the largest land mammal on earth was enjoying a bath a few yards away. There is a sense of peace, calm, and pleasure that hangs in the air as Craig slowly stirs the growing chocolate pudding until his massive body is completely coated in dark, red-brown muck. With a huge heave ho, he hauls himself out and slowly ambles into the bush.
As Craig disappears into the trees another bull comes down the path! I wonder if the bulls have chosen numbers back in the forest to decide who gets to bathe first.
This bull proceeds to go through the same ritual as Craig: survey the bath, suck in mud for that first coat, spray, repeat, slide into the mud hole, enjoy, spray more mud, exit. There are no wet towels to hang up, just a growing soupy edge around the water hole. A group of zebras arrive during the elephants’ spa session. They survey the scene; there is no clean water left to drink. After the big boys’ baths there’s just one massive bowl of liquid muck.
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