Blogs from Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape, South Africa, Africa - page 3

Route 62 & Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa, 14-18 September On 14 September we arriving at Addo, we settle into our unit where we were staying for 1 night. The accommodation was large but run down unfortunately. It would be a good situation for a family who wanted to self cater, but for us it didn’t quite work. At least we had good heating because it was really cold at night. We booked ourselves in for a night game drive and a morning game drive. We made sure we put plenty of clothes on and the guide also provided a woollen poncho for each of us. We saw plenty of animals, however saw even more when we were driving around ourselves during the day. So the next day, we spent driving around Addo, which was ... read more

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 ... read more

Geo: -33.5474, 25.7269We woke at 5.40am, freezing, to find that the electricity was still out. That meant packing in complete darkness. Rain was falling heavily outside. After breakfast we said goodbye (with little regret) to the Wildcoast, and set off towards Addo Elephant National Park.Lunch was at Georgetown, a pretty city built in 1820. It displayed a combination of Dutch and English architecture as well as a few very nice cathedrals. We took some time to walk around the city, exploring a cathedral and noting a loud protest going on at the Town Hall.We arrived at Addo around 2pm, our accomodation here being small forest cabins located in the Main Camp. The camp was a fenced off area, from the surrounding game park, nearby to a reception, shop, bar and resteraunt. There were also viewing areas ... read more

Leaving stormy Cape Town, we picked up a rental car to begin our journey around South Africa. No trip here would be complete without venturing to the wine-lands area of Stellenbosch, a gorgeous European town set among some of the most picturesque patchwork of vineyards and dramatic mountain ranges. We sampled the wines at Neethlingshof, a wine farm at the end of a gorgeous tree lined avenue, with rose gardens and delightful wines. Unfortunately we were short on time so could only sample one wine farm in this area. Driving through the beautiful Western Cape along the Garden Route was interesting in itself. Stunning scenery of golden beaches and forested mountains mingled with mansions and huge rudimentary townships that sprawl for miles along the main roads. We had lunch at a café while we watched people ... read more

Today we drove to Addo Elephant National Park about 1 hour north of Port Elizabeth, which was about an hour and a half from Jeffreys bay where we were staying. We did a 2 hour game drive which was really awesome. We saw Elephants, Black-backed Fox, Kudu, Elans, Black Rhinocerous, and ostriches. We even saw the full Ostrich mating ritual from the attention getting all the way through the entire act, which lasted about 2 minutes haha. I had found out that we could record on the TV at Jeffreys Bay and so I recorded the World Cup games and after the game drive we all headed back home to watch the games and bbq! We couldn’t go to the bar to watch the games because of someone’s actions at the bar last night haha. Since ... read more