Hapoor Water Hole - elephant central
A photographer's delight
My wife and I are full of anticipation as we crest the hill on the dusty road that is the spine of the Addo Elephant Park (AEP). There are a few good sightings on the way, but we always have high expectations of Hapoor. We slow down and look ahead at the flattened basin. Sure enough there in the distance, at the most productive location in the Park, we can see several cars parked around the water hole.
Of course, if there are elephants you might expect to see them first because they are bigger, but they are harder to distinguish against the brown sandy plain and muddy waters. The vehicles are multi-coloured with shiny bits of chrome.
Yes, there are definitely some cars there – and those brown lumps could very well be elephants. I don’t think they are buffalo. They’re too small. Let’s get there quickly.
You can’t go too quickly because there are speed limits and dung beetles on the way. There is a blanket 40km/h limit throughout the park and signs all over the place urge visitors to watch out for the flightless beetles. They are always criss-crossing the roads in their never ending search for the fanciest dollops of dung.
We drive (slowly) along the dirt road and turn left onto the tarmac leading to elephant photography central. There are a few zebras nonchalantly munching grass on the side of the road. Sometimes, they just stop and stare straight ahead at nothing in particular. Then we notice a leopard tortoise trundling along just before the Mpunzi Loop turn-off. They always seem to hang out at that rather non-descript intersection. I can’t really see the attraction.
Then we cautiously navigate onto the viewing apron in front of the Hapoor water hole. It is a wide parking area where vehicles can stop with a good view of the actual water hole on one side or the small watering trough on the other.
The shallow trough appeared quite recently – in the last year or so. I believe that park management built the much smaller trough in an effort to water animals that elephants usually muscle away the larger water hole. If that was indeed the strategy, it did not work. The elephants took over both water sources and zebras still have to wait in hot sun – sometimes for hours.
It is often the younger elephants that seem to derive a special kind of pleasure chasing thirsty zebras away from a water hole.
Warthogs are nimbler than either elephants or zebras, so they can dart in towards the water’s edge, drink quickly and then retreat for a few minutes. They rest and then repeat the exercise.
You need to drive very slowly on this piece of tarmac because not only are the cars randomly repositioning themselves to afford a better view for their occupants, but the elephants themselves wander in among the cars as they stroll from one part of the herd to the other. It can be a delicate manoeuvring exercise not to block other vehicles nor get in the way of a matriarch guiding her family to safer territory.
I believe there is no better place in Africa to watch and photograph elephants. They extend their trunks to quench their thirst and then spray goopy mud back onto their bodies. They often do this several times until their whole bodies are covered in mud. On a hot summer’s day, they gingerly step into water until they are almost completely submerged. Elephants enjoy the cooling waters and sometimes rough-house with each other in the mud like human teenagers.
The number of elephants at Hapoor increases dramatically when the weather is hot. On a cold day, there might be no animals at all, but if the mercury rises over 30C you can be sure that there will be tens, if not hundreds of elephants congregating around Hapoor.
It is not the biggest water hole in the park, but there is no doubt that it attracts the most elephants. They don’t all drink or play in the water at the same time. Usually they arrive in small herds of ten or twenty animals. If it is very hot, the youngest animals actually run towards the water.
After they have enjoyed the water for a while, they will back off into social groups in the vicinity, thus allowing other animals to have a drink. It is normal to find ten or 15 separate herds gathered around the area.
Young calves drink from their mothers while many of the elephant cows appear to enjoy each other’s company without having to do much. The heat beats down on them and they stay close together with their bodies providing shade for the younger ones.
Young bulls often cannot contain their energy and use the time to spar with each other or chase some thirsty warthogs. Older bulls seem to be constantly sniffing out the cows in the hope of an opportunity to mate.
Hapoor is a great place to take hundreds of photos of elephants up-close. The average distance between the parking apron and the edge of the water is between five and ten metres - an ideal range for my 70-200mm lens and for virtually any smartphone.
When elephants move around they often stroll onto the parking apron and can come so close to your car, you imagine you could put your hand out and feel its skin.
Although the lighting is usually excellent, the scenery around Hapoor is dull. Hundreds of elephants milling about every day have flattened just about everything in the vicinity. The backdrop is flat and uninteresting, but the presence of so many elephants more than makes up for the lack of scenery.
For many years, the scenery at Hapoor was reasonably pleasing with a large bed of reeds attracting bird life and make the whole picture more appealing. Management had to remove the reeds to empty out the water hole in order to repair the holding wall. Apparently it was at risk of collapsing.
The water hole has now moved slightly to one side, and frankly, it still looks ugly – but of course we will go back as often as we can.
Why is the water hole called Hapoor?
When I first started visiting the Addo Elephant Park, I thought the name ‘Hapoor” was somehow of Indian origin. Oops – my bad.
Hapoor was in fact, the name of a huge bull elephant who ruled the park from 1944 until 1968. He had a distinctive notch in his ear which gave him the Afrikaans name Hapoor meaning ‘notch-ear’. It is believed that a hunter’s bullet caused the nick and was probably responsible for his notoriously bad attitude towards humans.
Today his head, with tusks is mounted in a small museum at the Main Camp of the park. Mounted heads are not my favourite. I think elephant heads look great on live elephants – but the exhibit does attract a lot of attention.