On the drive out of Nyika, we had one last animal encounter. It started with fresh dung–there were several piles on the road that hadn’t been there when we drove into Nyika.

A pile of poop, with Penny's foot for scale
A pile of poop, with Penny’s foot for scale

Then we started noticing a smell, reminiscent of a cattle farm, that would occasionally waft through the woodlands. On those occasions, I climbed out onto the roof rack to have a look around, but didn’t see anything.Then we rounded a bend in the road and came face-to-face with an elephant considerably more massive than our 4×4.

He was about 30 yards away, right in the middle of the road, and we waited a minute or two for him to move out of the way into the bush. I put the car in first gear and started to ease past the place where he went off of the road, and suddenly there he was again. He had gone less than 10 yards off of the road and then turned to face us. When we came even with him, he began flapping his ears and trumpeting at us, and I don’t know what he did next because visions of the T-rex chase scene from Jurassic Park were flashing in my head, and I decided to get out of there as quickly as possible.