Addo Elephant NP

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After leaving Shamwari, we made the short drive to Addo Elephant National Park. Addo is different to Shamwari as it is government ran. It is the third biggest national park in South Africa and was proclaimed as a national park in 1931, when there was only 16 elephants left. Now there are approximately 550 elephants, as well as a myriad of other types of wildlife.

We checked into the Aardvark guesthouse, then after some lunch, we went down to the park to join a game drive. The game drive was pretty interesting. We saw quite a few zebra, antelopes and elephants. Other than that, our guide spotted a leopard tortoise and later we saw a jackal howling, which was definitely one of the most remarkable things I have seen on safari.

The next day we decided to a self drive safari in Addo. This is very easy to do. The roads are all tarred and you are given a map, which together with the signposts on each junction, makes it very easy to navigate. I drove before lunch time and it was very enjoyable to be in control, look out for animals yourselves and stop to watch for as long as you want. We saw a lot of what we saw the day before. We also had a 5 minute stop to observe a tan coloured shape in the distance, which turned out to be a rock instead of the lion, we hoped it might be.

We got some lunch just outside the park and afterwards Dad took over the driving. Almost straight away we saw a herd of buffaloes crossing the road to get to a watering hole. Later, we saw plenty more elephants, but didn't stop for long as we drove down to the part of the park, where people had indicated on a map outside that they had seen lions and leopards earlier that day. Unfortunately, we had no joy in trying to find any cats. We did come across some of the more unusual smaller animals though, such as a dung beetle, a scrub hare and more jackals.

We were almost at the gate of the park on the way out, when we had some drama. We noticed a few cars stopped up ahead of us. We presumed they were loking at some elephants, which we had seen plenty of that day, so we began to go around them. Next thing, we were confronted by a big bull elephant, pacing down the road towards us. Other cars, were beginning to reverse back and other off road vehicles, went into the bush to go around it, which left us first in line as the bull advanced. After a shaky few moments, Dad managed to get the car into reverse and we pulled back and down a side road, waiting until the elephant had passed by.

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