Malanville Return Day 1: Elephants, Termites and Watering Holes, oh my!

It all started with a sign. My colleague Scott and had been been on the road for about 2 hours or so. We left the rest of the team in Malanville to finish up the site visit while we started the 12 hour drive back to Cotonou a day earlier. Both of us has urgent things to finish up at the office so we decided to cut our trip short.

Only an hour or so earlier I'd offered to help out with the driving but then audibly gasped when I realized Scott's car was manual. There went my gracious offer. But alas, he had an idea "Hey, wanna learn to drive stick now?" I couldn't resist. So I spent an hour trying Scott's patience and trying not to destroy our sole mode of transport for the next 2 days. That was just the beginning of the pleasant misadventures of two USAID workers.

When I saw the sign I was recuperating from my grueling lesson and enjoying the scenery. It said something along the lines of "Caution: Elephants crossing."   I perked up and got my camera ready to snap photos of elephants I was sure would appear out of nowhere to cross the road!


Scott burst the anticipatory bubble a bit saying that although the signs are there elephant crossings are rare. However, if I really wanted to see elephants, we would be passing the W national park where there was bound to be more wildlife. I couldn't resist.  So we drove further to the entrance and did run into some animals crossing the road. . .no elephants, just goats bleating for their mom.

We also came across the biggest one of these I've ever seen.  Can you identify it?


So we entered the park, paid our dues (about $5 per person) and took pics of the park map.


We made room for our guide to hop in the front seat with us and started on our hunt for wildlife.  My secret hope was, even as elusive as they seemed to be, that the elephants I saw would not just be the ones on this sign.

A small aside:  my favorite male personalities in the world tend to be park rangers, teachers and artists. Why?  They tend to have great minds and march to the beat of their own drummer in a good way:)   So I was a particularly happy camper. Conversation in the car was interesting. Turns out a our guide is the landlord for a Peace Corps volunteer in that area of Benin.  Small world.
Back to our hunt,  The guide explained to us that the challenge with the park in the rainy season is that water sources become more plentiful and it becomes harder to find the animals.  In dry season they tend to congregate around more limited sources of water.

Green loveliness. Lots of it in the park.

At one point while driving our guide  told us to stop the car.  He hopped out without explanation was went bounding into the bush, presumably following tracks.  So I used it as a photo opportunity.
The park was quite lovely.  We drove through only a small portion of the park since we didn't want to completely derail our good intentions to get back to the office by the next day.  After 10 minutes or so he came back explaining to us he saw an elephant.  Then he proceeded to show us the tracks the elephant made along the park road when he crossed.  Honestly, to this day I don't know if I was really able to see the tracks.  I even asked the guide to put his foot in it.  Made for a nice pic but still didn't help me see the outline of the tracks. Can you see it or is it just me? Oh bother.:)

Guide foot in elephant track

We went back to the entrance of the park, and went trudging through the woods on another path to a wildlife looking station near a popular watering hole.  Here I am looking: 

Me looking.

Us trudging.

Sorry  to report I didn't see much beyond the watering hole.  But it was great looking.  Reminded me of Great Falls Park in MD/VA. 

So that was the elephant hunt.  The animals we did see but didn't get pics of were cows, gazelles, guinea fowl and cranes, I think.

Then it was back on the road. Not to eventful as we drove to Parakou to spend the night then hop back on the road to continue the trip the next day.  Those are stories for the next post: Malanville Return Day 2: Underground homes and palaces