It's Linda Stevens here, giving Kim a break from It's Monday by doing my own. After two wild weeks haring around Namibia with a trio of friends, my spouse David and I – still with friends – pitched up on the steps of Robin's House a week ago.  It’s our fourth or fifth trip (we can’t remember which) and a first for our friends, so our RPS nanny, Bean, read us all the usual rules, including a new warning: "Try not to fall asleep outside. There's been an elephant walking around the past couple of days, and if you wake up and see him..."  The mere possibility boggled the mind.

So, a few hours later, sitting out in the garden, friend Shaz and I noticed a largish young male elephant creeping towards us at about, say, six feet, and our minds were duly boggled. Sufficiently sensible to mutter a simple "Freeze!" to each other, we got a quick trunk-sniff from our accidental tourist (already dubbed El-Roy) and he sashayed on by.

But there was more. David, sitting with his gin and tonic about ten feet away, was less circumspect about El-Roy and his outstretched trunk bearing down on him. He listened to our advice about freezing before muttering "That's all very well for you to say..." and leaping out of his chair to run behind the nearest tree. El-Roy was startled sufficiently to knock over the G&T but recovered his composure, ate a few tree branches, and moved on down toward main camp.

...It was our first meeting with El-Roy...

Next morning he was back for breakfast, and again at lunch. Bored by now with our eats, he gave us short shrift, wandered over to main camp lunch, and when folks there ran for cover El-Roy took his golden opportunity to eat the hot mango chutney.

Patience was wearing thin. He’d been shouted at, clapped at… The usual things to discourage your average young loner elephant. Next day he knocked over most of the fence at Robin's House and half the bar at main camp. 

That afternoon David and I headed over to the swimming pool and there was El-Roy, eating away at the trees overhanging the sunbeds where a troop of baboons were lounging. Funnily enough, Robin was gliding by on his way to say Goodnight to his gang down at the workshop, noticed us noticing El-Roy, and stopped to advise. "Stay this side of the pool" he said. But then he thought better of it, picked up a few pebbles, and fired them at El-Roy's ample bottom. Teenagers of all type sometimes need firm hand to keep them in line!

Robin’s unique brand of persuasion seems to have done the trick, and we haven’t seen El-Roy since. We know he was a bit of a menace, but we’ve missed him. It's not often you have a teenaged bull elephant walk through your garden.

But we’ve had plenty of other distractions. Loads of game out there: plenty of lions (with a decimated buffalo on one visit), the odd leopard or two, enough baby elephants to make one think that somewhere Mother Nature is smiling... And remember me mentioning the workshop?

When we were here last year Robin proudly showed us a heap of rusty junk blighting the landscape in front of RoJo House. In better times, Robin claimed, it had been a 1956 Land Rover, and he fully intended to make it one again. It was his project for the rains.

And guess what? It runs! We drove in it! Wonders never cease! Why in the world do we have to go back to England?

Best Wishes

Linda Stevens
Robin Pope Safaris

Robin Pope Safaris are acclaimed owners and operators of three exclusive bush camps in the Luangwa Valley including Nkwali, Nsefu and Tena Tena camps, and Robins House. They are also specialists in unique guided walking safaris in the South and North Luangwa National Park.