Cradock, Addo Eephant Park, Grahamstown and Port Alfred

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Having left Camdeboo NP & the Valley of Desolation mid-morning we made our way to the Addo Elephant Park via Cradock to see the place my Great Grandfather lived in when he moved out from Ireland. We found the house in Cradock and took a photo and then went to get some coffee in town. It doesn’t appear to have much appeal as a town these days, but with some imagination we could visualise the kind of place it must have been 100 years ago. It seemed the kind of place that once was a bustling little colonial town set in the Karoo with architecture typical of the Victorian era, where horses would have pulled carts down wide streets, past their shady tree lined sides. Where the big church was central to the day to day life of the people living there, the same church my Grandfather left a neat golf ball size hole in the steeple window, when trying to chip a ball over the top with friends.

From there it was a relatively short drive down to Addo NP where we stayed for 2 nights. Night one was in one of the forest cabins and night two in a safari tent - we braai’d and heard lions roaring during the night on both nights. We did some drives during the day and saw Elephant, Buffalo, Zebra, Warthog, Kudu and a Black-backed Jackal in an awkward position (see photo). We tried hard to find the lions we heard but didn’t manage to. The bush is quite dense and green at Addo and quite different to the dry Kruger bush-land where it’s sometimes easier to see animals.

Next up was Grahamstown, which wasn’t too far down the road but we got there mid-afternoon, having done a game drive in the morning at Addo and a stop to see the Settlers Memorial on the way. We hadn’t booked anything at Grahamstown and since it was a Saturday on the weekend of K-Day it maybe wasn’t the wisest thing. We nonetheless found a hotel in the centre of town with a nice comfortable room after turning down the backpackers on the outskirts of town that wasn’t very appealing. After dropping off our bags we hit the infamous Rat & Parrot pub just round the corner for a beer and bite. The rugby came on and with that more beers, and later the crowds came out and so did some more beers. So by the time we left we were in a merry mood and after stopping in at one or two more watering holes we got back to the hotel to find our room was directly above Champs bar. Needless to say we fell asleep to the beats & tunes from below and slept soundly.



The next morning was a touch rough as the beers caught up to us but as breakfast was included in the hotel rate we indulged in a greasy yet tasty cure for the cranium. From there we headed for Port Alfred via the Fish River Sun hotel & golf course to meet up with Duane for the afternoon. At Port Alfred we stayed at the nice & simple Bretton Beach Cottages for three nights (originally only planned for two). Up until here we had only figured out our route and booked any accommodation a day or so ahead at the most and it was nice to have an extra night to do some more thinking towards where we were aiming to stay while in the Transkei and onwards. Aside from seeing the town or spending time on the beach in Port Alfred, we did some repacking of the Caddy and route/accommodation planning for the week ahead.

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