Today would bring the biggest heart warming surprise, but only after a heart racing start to the day.

Up as usual at 6am, breakfast, stretching excercises and then ready to pack up the truck when there was a heart wrenching scream from one of the women. “Scorpion”! Now…, I’m not normally squeamish about bugs, that was until I saw this monster coming out from the rocks closest to where I had been snoring all night.

This is the Black Hairy Thick Tailed Scorpion (Parabuthus villosus). 18cm long! ” Highly venomous, it kills prey quickly”. I read later that you have two, maximum four hours, to seek antivenom or you are ‘toast’. Knowing that it is at least 4 hours drive to the nearest dirt track, let alone tarmac or civilisation it is a stark reminder that Africa is no, ‘walk in the park’.

The day could only get better and it certainly did.

Our guides, Herman and Andrea’s decided it would be best to return to the Huab herd ( led by the Matriarch, Kinky). This was the herd that we had seen at 4pm the previous day but, on masse, unable to photograph or ID because of our emotional blubbering.

It was just after we dropped down in to the empty riverbed that we saw 5 elephants. One, a male, immediately identified by the guides as the normally solitary, Lucky, but it became quickly apparent that the guides had never seen the remaining small herd. They thought likely 3 females ( males and females look similar until puberty) and a new baby. We newbie volunteers would have been none the wiser – after all one of the females was tagged – but when you see two grown Namibian men hugging and crying you know that something earth shattering has happened.

Herman asked us to photograph each unnamed elephant, quickly (front, back, tails with GPS coords) because we needed to leave them. The elephants’ stress was palpable. Females sweating from glands behind their eyes, all standing bolt upright, none eating and the baby pushing to get below their legs.

We later find out back in base camp that this herd had wondered here from the mountains 200km north and the groups Matriarch had been tagged by a Namibian University. Why had they come here? Would they stay or return? Were the related to other elephants in the Huab river basin?

Moving on, a further hours drive, and now with the desert cooking at a 40 degrees midday temperature we came across the main Huab herd. They were sheltering under the biggest arcacia tree in the riverbed. Huddled together to protect the baby, Hope, but also several lying down. I had not seen this before. Herman told us that with the distances travelled and the heat they tire, so at each ‘pit stop’ they will take it in turns to properly rest.

Watching this herd was a huge privilege. With so little movement, shuffling around in the sand, small blinks of sleeping eyes, showers of sand from their trucks it was a mesmerising scene. One that made your own body feel really heavy and close to sleep.