A bull elephant lifted the 22-seater truck multiple times with his trunk before dropping it. The driver can be heard crying out to the elephant to “go away” and smacking his hand against the truck’s side to scare it away.
Frightened passengers are pictured crouching between seats during a tense standoff between a bull elephant and a safari truck in Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa.
Hendry Blom, a spectator who captured the incident on video, told ABC News, “We were definitely scared, especially for the people in the truck because we thought they might die.”
Another footage from inside the truck shows terrified travelers crouching on the bottom of the vehicle.A woman may be heard praying as the elephant approaches.
Poncho Mogodiri, field operations manager of Mankwe Game Trackers, the tour business involved in the incident, told ABC News that the guide and passengers were in an animal hide when the bull elephant approached. “Hides provide you with the rare opportunity to unobtrusively view wildlife and birds at close quarters,” says Pilanesberg National Park.
