Elephants of Amboseli, Some of the most beautiful wild parts of Africa are protected by Kenya’s national parks. There are no strict park lines in this country, so wildlife can roam freely. This makes you think of what it must have been like many years ago, when there were fewer people and a lot more animals.Another thing that’s easy to see is why the colonists loved this country so much. In every direction you look, there is a huge space, a feeling of freedom, and the promise of crazy chances.

Amboseli National Park is beautiful because it has wide views and plains with tortilis, or umbrella thorn trees, that make the scenery look like a typical African one. It has a huge swamp that gets bigger and smaller when it rains. Rivers that run down from Kilimanjaro feed this wetland. These rivers give a lot of animals and birds food and water.

The elephants are the most obvious of these. Every day, they leave the swampy woods early in search of new grass to graze on. Seeing a group of huge pachyderms float on the haze of the Amboseli plain is one of the most moving things you can see in Africa. They look like ghostly, pale-gray galleons sailing in a line across a grass sea. Kilimanjaro in the background.

Most vertebrates live for about a billion heartbeats. For example, a shrew has a heart rate like a machine gun, so it only lives for a couple of years. Tortoises that move slowly can live up to 300 years. People and elephants both live about the same amount of time, but elephants are controlled by something else.

Elephants get new huge teeth several times during their lifetime. They usually only have one set in each jaw. When their last set is worn down, they can’t chew the rough wood and bark they eat, as well as the sand in the grass they eat. They lose weight and finally die of hunger.

People think that elephants, like whales and apes, are very smart and have strong emotions. They can talk to each other over long distances using ultrasound, which helps them stay in touch while they travel. The trunk is very sensitive, strong, and flexible.

At the end of its tail, an African elephant has two “fingers” that it can use to crack open a peanut shell without cutting the nut inside. It can also move things that weigh up to 350 kilograms. The trunk is a very complicated moving body part because it has 150,000 different muscle groups. Elephants also use their trunks to honk, drink, scratch, touch, grab, breathe, as a snorkel (because they are good swimmers), as a hose, and to smell. The smell sense of an elephant is four times stronger than that of a bloodhound.

In many parts of Africa, hunting has wiped out the gene pool of big tuskers and severely damaged elephant populations. However, Amboseli is still one of the few places in the world where huge elephants with modified incisors in their upper jaws can still be seen roaming the plains. Men and women of the African elephant species both have horns, but only males of the Asian species do.

People usually have one or two tusks on each side. The tusk that is in front is called the master or slave tusk. That tusk will be worn down more than the other because it is used more, and it will often break off during an elephant’s lifetime.

Big tuskers can go around the camp at Satao Elerai Lodge without being stopped. They start to gather at the waterhole in front of the cabin early in the morning, and while people come and go, the big animals take over. Animals like giraffes, elands, kudu, and others hang out on the edges, like transgender people at a biker bar. The smarter black-backed jackals play a dangerous game by running in and out between their legs to steal a drink.

Ever since the Satao Elerai Conservancy was created, elephants have come back and, as they often do, changed the landscape in big ways. In the first few years, they cut down almost all of the big honey-nectared blackthorn (Acacia me//Lera) and fever trees (Acacia xanthophloea, also known as elemi in the area).

But what’s bad for one person is good for another. It took the builders two years to gather all the downed trees they could use to build the house. People have found very creative ways to use tree trunks, branches, and roots for both structural parts and fancy fittings. The stairs in the main bar, lounge, and dining room are a masterpiece of structural engineering and architecture.

The Amboseli plain was covered in dark storm clouds on our last night there. The man in charge of the Satao Elerai lodge said, “It will snow tonight.” When we woke up early, Kilimanjaro was bathed in a soft golden glow, and the snow covered the peak of the mountain. That rainbow after a storm made me think that better times were on the way.