12:15AM. Rosemary shakes me awake and whispers loudly: "There's an elephant in the camp!" Groggily, I raise myself up and peer out the small screened opening at the rear of our tent. In the nearly full moon, I make out the outline of a large elephant. Probably a solitary bull, he's about 40 meters away munching on a tree, and not being particularly quiet about it.

The elephant is a lovely sight in the moonlight. But I've seen a lot of elephants recently, and at this hour sleep is especially attractive to me. I roll over and close my eyes.

Sleep eludes me. The elephant is making too much noise. Lying there with my eyes closed, he seems to be chewing with greater and greater intensity. I sit up and look out, but can't spot him. Rosemary whispers, "He's over by Graeme and Jane's tent", which is just 10 meters from ours.

"What do we do?" she gasps.

"Don't move" is the only response I can think of. That and (silently) "and if you have to pee, hold it!"

We hardly breathe. The elephant sounds like he is trying to push over the tree that is next to our tent. Branches are cracking like whips. His trunk smacks up against the tent wall less than a meter from my head, then slides into view through the tent window, followed by a long white tusk gleaming in the moonlight. An enormous leg, then another, plants itself directly outside the window. If the screen wasn't in the way, and if I was a crazy man, I could reach out and touch his right leg. But I pride myself on not being a crazy man, though right now I'm feeling like I could definitely do something crazy.

Rosemary says "I can't look" and slowly submerges under the blanket, leaving me to do the manly thing and stare fixedly at the bulk of the largest terrestrial animal on the planet, which at the moment seems to be blocking the light of the moon. Lying in the dark, we listen to leaves and branches grinding against massive elephant molars. The vegetation makes a squeaking sound in the elephant's mouth.

It seems as if he is considering whether or not to go between Rosemary's side of the tent and the bushes. There isn't enough space for me to do that in the daylight. I imagine what might happen if, in the darkness, the elephant trips over one of the multiple tent guy lines pegged into the ground, and panics. Inside this tent would be a bad place to be. I console myself with rational thoughts about how the sensitive trunk of an elephant can detect the smallest objects.

The elephant slowly moves a few meters off to the right and away from the tent. For a moment, all I can see is elephant backside. In a few minutes, we can barely hear it as it makes its way out of the camp area.

I lie on my back, heart beating wildly. Eventually, I go to sleep.

In the morning, Rosemary said it took her hours to go back to sleep. Gus reports at breakfast that he saw it, and that it was a bull, about 13 ft. at the shoulder. Looked like twenty to me.

The morning game drive starts at 05:20. We are fatigued after entertaining our nocturnal visitor. We spot kilspringer and then a herd of about 14 elephants not far outside of camp, browsing across a hillside.

We park and hike up a nearly dry creek. There are elephant foot-sized holes in the sand where they have been searching for water. Gus says they dig the holes because they prefer cooler water than what is available.

We hang out for 45 minutes beside a spring, seated on the edge of a 15 meter drop-off. Gus tells us that there are 45 black rhino in the park (this is the highly endangered species) and sometimes they come here to drink. But all we see is a small croc and a few turtles.

A short hike to an adjacent spring brings us to a scattered collection of elephant bones in the sand, and an enormous skull. This one didn't die of old age, as its teeth are not worn down. The bones are stripped clean, but still smell slightly, and Gus opines that it probably died less than a month ago.

That afternoon the temperature again hits 100F by 2PM, and we can't nap.

On the afternoon boat drive, Graeme spots a lioness coming down to the water to drink. She sees us and heads back up into the bush. We go ashore and hike to within 30 meters of the brush line. A lioness is sitting in the shade. Perched above her are two vultures. In our binoculars we can clearly see her give us a menacing snarl, then she turns around and disappears. The sound of cracking bones emanates from the bush. A local lion pride is in there, feeding on a recent kill. But we dare not go any closer on foot.

That night there are no visitors, at least not any we heard.