In the late 90s, I made a very brief trip to South Africa for work.  I had one day spare while I was there and so took a trip to Pilanesburg National Park, a wildlife reserve.  I spent a day driving around looking at various different wild animals, mostly at a great distance.  Since it was the middle of the day, lots of the interesting stuff was out of sight.  Near the end of my time there, I took a drive down a side road to a watering hole that was supposed to be popular with hippos.  I find hippos fascinating so was hoping to see some.  No such luck.

As I drove back up towards the main road and started contemplating a return to Johannesburg, I saw a bunch of cars on the main road that had stopped.  I slowed down, figuring that they had seen something off to one side so I started looking.  Sure enough, they had.  An elephant was wandering through the trees and coming straight for me.  I sat watching it approach.  It didn’t seem bothered that I was there and came straight for the car.  When I realized that it was going to come right through me, I put the car in reverse and quickly got out of the way – grabbing a close up shot as I did so.  It came on to the road and turned away from me walking towards a camper van.  The van soon came to the same conclusion that I had.  The elephant wasn’t interested in stopping or going around them so they had to reverse up the road as the elephant paced them appropriately.  Finally it turned off and I imagine they breathed a sigh of relief.