We had a fabulous time at Antelope Park (http://www.antelopepark.co.zw/ ) - we can highly recommend it. On one of the days, we had some chill time before going on a swim with the elephants. We had no ideas what this involved before we got there – were we sitting on them or just splashing around? - we had no idea.
We were the first in our group to go and so still had no idea when we were told to get on top of an elephant and hold on to the elephant driver. He had a wetsuit on which should of given us some hint.
Our elephants (Scotty was on another elephant at the same time as us) plodded off towards a lake, them entered the lake and then with some encouragement from their driver proceeded to go under the water with us on them.
Now each elephant went under the water slightly differently – Scotty’s elephant rocked form front to back and went under but not our elephant. Our elephant decided to roll over on its side. There is no saddle so we were just holding on to the person in front – Helen held onto the guide, I held onto Helen. You couldn’t grip your legs around the elephant’s back, it was too wide. Then the elephants, each in their own style, went under the water and so did we.
At one point someone said that we were all under the water except for the two elephants trunks that were out of the water breathing. We were a little scared at first but we eventually got used to it and settled in.
It was great fun! At one point both of the elephants got really close and as ours went over on its side, it was endanger of crushing us against the other elephant. We all survived though and it was all over too quickly – we loved it.
