It's very strange to see animals you'd previously seen only in zoos without any fences, moats or men with guns between you.

They have a national park here just for elephants. That's not entirely true... there are other animals in it, but it's called the Addo Elephant National Park. We saw 29 living and two dead elephants.

"These were very much alive."
We drove in in our 2002 Toyota Corolla rental and spotted two of the giants quickly. They were quite far off, but amazing to watch. These were very much alive. The dead elephants were to come a while later.

We drove for a long time down the dusty dirt roads past bunches of kudus and zebras seeing no more elephants. We thought our only elephant experience was going to be those first two that were far away... until the smell hit us.

"This stink was from two giant dead elephants."
You know the smell. A dead deer on the road or the mysterious death funk when you see nothing but vultures circling over a spot in the forest. But this stink was from two giant dead elephants. I never looked at them though the binoculars, but Dad and Matt reported one must have been dead much longer than the other. The less-dead one looked like it might have been alive. The long-dead one was wrinkled and covered with bird poo.

Old age? Disease? No. The rangers later told us it was the result of an "elephant war." There was no mention of the use of weapons of mass destruction, but we were told many elephants from different herds had been involved but only these two had been killed.

"Close enough to see well without binoculars"
Late in the day we finally came across bunches and bunches of elephants. They were generally in groups of three to six and were at least maybe 400 yards from the car. Never close enough to feel like they were right on top of us, but definitely close enough to see well without binoculars. They didn't seem to care at all about the cars chasing them around; they just lumbered on about their way. We were not, by the way, allowed out of the car while inside the park.

Getting from the park to our hotel in Grahamstown was an interesting experience. The road was under construction, but not in any way you'd experience in most of the western world. In three mile-long stretches it was reduced to one lane. So three times we had to sit and wait as traffic was allowed to go the other way for a really, really long time. The sign said the wait was 20 minutes, but it probably wasn't quite that long. The idea that it's a cardinal sin to inconvenience motorists hasn't found its way here yet.