My first real encounter with elephants was in Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania. My friend and I and our guide were driving along a road that wound through the trees when we saw elephants. We stopped and turned off the engine. It was a one-lane road, and the turns in the road meant we could not see any other vehicles. As we stood inside the vehicle, our heads sticking up through the open roof, cameras at the ready, the elephants slowly walked out of the forest and surrounded our vehicle, and we spent many minutes watching and listening as they browsed. Without warning, two vehicles we had not known were ahead of us switched on their engines to drive away, startling the elephants. The elephants trumpeted in alarm, and the elders hurried the young ones back into the forest. A few of the younger adults stayed on the road. One in particular glared at us from a few feet away, ears flapping, looking like it might charge us. Our guide cautioned that we should stay quite still or sit down in the vehicle until the elephants calmed down. He did not seem overly concerned.
A few minutes went by, and the emotional dust settled. The herd emerged again from the forest and spent close to an hour browsing around the vehicle. This time, the babies were ushered out as well, and we were witness to the entire family just living their lives. Such a gift. Eventually, what I imagine was the matriarch ambled out into the road behind our vehicle and began rubbing against a tree. She blocked the entire road. Soon, another vehicle pulled up out of our view on the other side of her, and I could hear the people talking. I imagined they were considering their good fortune at seeing this elephant so close. Meanwhile, all the members of the herd were calmly disappearing once again into the forest. When they were all gone, the matriarch ambled away, releasing the vehicle to carry on down the road toward us. We now had a vehicle behind us and no more elephants to see, so our guide started the engine, and we drove off toward our next experience. To this day, I marvel that for a time, we were accepted as part of the herd and at the strategic intelligence of the matriarch in making sure that the herd was not alarmed a second time.
My second encounter was years later in Namibia, where there are what are called desert-adapted elephants. I looked forward to another opportunity to commune with a herd as an accepted member, albeit a strange metal member. My friend and I and our guide drove through the sandy valley looking for elephant footprints. Eventually we found the trail, and drove across the sand and through sparse vegetation to find the herd. The trail rounded the base of a cliff. As we headed for the turn, a large elephant appeared coming our way. I expected that we would stop in our tracks and wait while the herd passed us by. Instead, our guide frantically put the vehicle in reverse and began backing down the trail as fast as he could go until he found a place to back into a spot well off the trail. There, he stopped, and we watched the herd file by. I asked why we hadn’t just stopped where we were. He said that these elephants would not have diverted around us. Instead, they would have moved us. Not a good experience by any measure. I was shocked at the difference in behavior and at my own assumptions. The next day, we found the herd again in a dry river bed where we parked well away from them. For hours, we watched the babies playing on a sandy hill while the adults browsed. None of them ever came near us.
My third encounter was at Gomoti Camp in Botswana. By this time, my expectation was that any elephant behavior might surprise me, but never would they be deliberately trying to harm or intimidate me. Wrong again. There, several times when driving down the road, an elephant would step out in front of us and challenge us to back away. Our guide would hold his (our) ground. He said that giving way to this aggressive behavior would teach the elephants that their challenge would work—a bad result. I would sit anxiously in the vehicle, wondering what would happen if the animal actually charged us.
Another time, we were off road, investigating a commotion coming from the general direction where we had left a pride of lions 
the day before. Suddenly out of the bush came an adult elephant running toward us. Seeing us, it halted for a moment, then trumpeted, flapped its ears, and charged. Our guide banged the side of the vehicle and yelled at it while I fearfully tipped my camera up from my lap and shot in the general direction of the elephant. I figured if I was going to die, at least I’d make a record of it. The elephant pulled up in a cloud of dust a few feet away from the truck, and we held our breath until it backed away. Our guide said this has happened to him before when the elephant didn’t stop, and the impact shoved him to the other side of the truck and left him bruised. I asked why the elephants here were so aggressive. The guide didn’t know for certain, but said they were often hunted by poachers who cross into Botswana from Angola, which might be the reason. But, elephants in Lake Manyara are also poached, and they acted totally differently. I can only conclude the obvious from all this, that all elephants are not the same and that I need to pay more attention to my expectations.
There was one other memorable encounter in Botswana. We were driving down a road in a wide, flat area of bush when a herd of elephants approached ahead to cross in front of us. We pulled off the road and stopped to watch. Soon, one of the larger elephants walked up to the front of the vehicle and stood blocking us for just long enough for the entire herd to cross safely and disappear into the bush. At last I experienced a familiar behavior—an elephant blocking the alien vehicle creature to safeguard the herd as it crossed into safety. It is a behavior that makes for excellent photographs, and I will try not to expect to see it again.