We rented a car to travel to the Kui Buri National Park for a half day elephant Safari. Although this national park does not allow any hiking it provides a unique opportunity to see beautiful landscape and it is the best place to spot elephants in the wild. We shared our tour with a Canadian couple from Alberta, who like us were on an extended travel journey. The woman had recently interviewed for a professorship job in agriculture at the university of Saskatchewan, telling us that despite university interviewing many candidates, they had not yet hired for the position. She had accepted a job in the Netherlands, where she grew up. Her partner, originally a dairy farmer from Alberta, who had left farming and was pursuing a master’s degree in Agricultural Economics, hoping on eventually going into policy development, was more interested in moving to Saskatoon than the Netherlands. They were good company, and it was fun to share the experience with them.
We were lucky enough to see one male elephant, and several Guars, the biggest wild cattle species. I was thrilled to have two sightings of the famous Hornbill, as well as a few other interesting birds. Although it was disappointing, not to see more elephants there have been recent rains and according to our guide, the elephants often move less following the rain, for fear of injuring themselves in the soft ground. This National Park only allows visitors between 2 and 6 PM, although the park spans 969 km, visitors are only allowed in a 20km region of the Park, they are only allowed to visit the park with a local guide in the back of a pick-up truck driven by a local farmer. These policies are in place to give the 300 elephants living in this huge national park the space they need from humans. It was interesting to see the rubber tree farms and pineapple farms as we were driving near the park.
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