Elephant Ride and Great Surprise

I was so excited for this activity as I finally got to interact with the animals. The first thing we did , after a briefing of course, was meet the elephants. The eles lined up and their heads were at the level of the deck where we stood. I met a large male named Jake. I was drawn to go meet him because of Justin's golden retriever whom I had adored was also named Jake. Jake put his trunk up on the deck and I felt the wirey hair and rough skin of the elephant. My grandmother was not so keen on this and refrained from touching the ele. We then climbed up a platform to get on our elephant saddles. Our guide arranged for us to have a female elephant because my grandmother is terrified of heights and the females are a little shorter. Our ele's name was Janet. She is 25 like me and has a baby elephant who is 3, unlike me. The baby walked alongside of us and would trumpet when he wanted to drink milk. He was a hungry elephant!! We walked through the bush and it was great to see everything from the height of the elephants. As we were walking, they would just break branches off of the trees, carry them along and eat as we went. When we got back to the lodge, we had to thank our elephants by giving them a treat. You were supposed to scoop up the treats with two hands and let the elephant suck them up with their trunk to put them in their mouth or you could ask them to lift their trunk and toss them into their mouth. My grandmother, not fond of this, kind of combined the two. As the elephant started to suck the treats up into her trunk, she would throw the treats toward the elephant. I thought it felt cool to feel how they suck things up into their trunk.

Our guide informed us they had a surprise for us up at the lodge. We headed up the steps and there on a leash was a cheetah. My grandmother said that my eyes got so big when I saw the cheetah. Cheetah is the only animal we had not seen yet on our game drives. The cheetah's name is Sylvester. He is an orphan that was rescued and is now pretty much a large domesticated cat. Despite my allergies to cats, I went up and started petting him and then let him kiss me with his scratchy tongue. I did not want to leave him, but had to give others a chance to see him. Getting to pet a cheetah was one of the major highlights of my trip!