Elephants in the Lobby

By Miss Cellania in Animals & Pets, Travel on Oct 2, 2008 at 10:11 am

Believe it or not, an elephant in the lobby of this hotel is not a rare event! The Mfuwe Lodge in the South Luangwa National Park in Zambia was built on a path the local elephants take to find wild mangoes. Andy Hogg, the director of the company that runs the hotel, says:

“This is the only place in the world where elephants freely get so close to humans,” says the 44-year-old.

“The elephants start coming through base camp in late November of each year to eat the mangoes from our trees.

“When they are ripe they come through and they stand about for four to six weeks coming back each day or second day to eat the mangoes.”

When the lodge was built, no one realized the elephants used that route. Link to story. Link to hotel website. -via Arbroath

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sw
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 am
the women behind the desk don’t look too excited about this arrangement.
Scotchdrnkr
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 11:13 am
Would you be if you were working the desk and that big of a Guest wanted to check in. LOL

Someone call maintenance. Theres a mess in the Lobby that needs to be cleaned up.
t-shirt design
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
that is kind of scary – don’t elephants sometimes get agressive?
Dim67
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 12:16 pm
“The lodge was built and then the elephants started coming through afterwards.”

yeah right – that sounds like a load of elephant sh*t to me and more a way to lure the tourists in.

Hopefully one day some fat tourist will get stomped on and they have to close and demolish that stupid hotel.
planettom
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
“I said I wanted a NON-SMOKING ROOM!”
mjgolli
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 1:11 pm
“No, sir. You are not drunk. That is a real elephant.”
mjgolli
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
“Reservation for one under Elephant. I’ll take my own trunk up to the room, thank you.”
ted
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
“When they are ripe they come through and they stand about for four to six weeks coming back each day or second day to eat the mangoes.”

How can you tell when an elephant is ripe?
mjgolli
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
“I reserved a room with a king size bed. Do I look like the kind of elephant that can fit on a twin? No, I didn’t think so.”
mjgolli
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
How can you tell when an elephant is ripe?

Just smell. Oooohhhh, the smell!
Ali S.
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I think this is just some convenient tourist trap. Think about it who in their right mind would willingly build a hotel on an elephant path and NOT expect elephants to walk through. In that case why do they have doors big enough to accommodate an elephant in the first place!?
Joe
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I’ve stayed there. Its an incredibly beautiful hotel, right on the river. The elephants walk right on through because there are no front doors – the building housing the reception desk is completely open. At least this way the elephants can walk on through without breaking anything. They had to fence off the pool to keep a particular hippo out and monkeys roam the grounds.

It costs a bloody fortune to stay there but it is worth every penny.
Jeremy
Oct 2nd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
That hippos is gonna sue. You know what its thinking.

“Oh, the ELEPHANTS can waltz right through, but the HIPPO gets a fence thrown in its face. I see how it is. What if I want a mango or some terrycloth robes HUH?!?!”
Jacob Leaf
Nov 4th, 2010 at 9:50 am
Amazing! Maybe the Elephant was checking in . Great picture we experience a similar thing in http://www.kaingo.com/ last year.
Safari Tanzania
Jan 31st, 2011 at 12:49 am
There are tented camps in Tanzania where this happens also, I can often hear elephants, hyena’s and lions outside my tent when I stay in the Serengeti.

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