Addo Elephant National Park

(Friday September 17, 2010) Today was a great day. Grandpa, Grandma and myself journeyed around Addo Elephant Park, a national park about an hour out of Port Elizabeth.

I picked them up from their B&B at about 8:30 this morning, after making a quick stop at the hardware store to look for an adapter/converter for Grandma's curling iron. She made it very clear that she did not want to be in pictures until her curling iron worked and she could remedy her "fuzzball" hair. Good news awaited me this morning when I arrived at the B&B and found out that the gate I "bumped" into last night in the rental car, had been put back on track! Sweeet!

We took the N2 highway out to Addo. The stretch of highway we were on at certain points runs right next to the ocean, so very scenic freeway driving! A ways out towards Addo, the region becomes more desolate and mountainous, and we began to see more townships. Townships are the areas where coloured people and black people were segregated to live during apartheid times, and still live currently.

This week has been National Parks Week in South Africa, so our trip into Addo was free admission. After making a pit stop at the restrooms/park reception, we drove into the reserve and got started searching for wild roaming African animals! As we entered the gates to the reserve, Grandpa spotted a deer like animal (kudu I think), but I was cruising along to quickly to be able to stop and see. The next fifteen minutes produced no animals as we drove through the preserve, and I really started to hope that we would at least see something, knowing we would be bummed if we drove through an elephant park all day and never saw an animal. No worries though, because after the first 15 minutes of our drive, the rest of the day was filled with exciting animal sightings. First were the kudu. The slightly deer like animals, the males with large spiral horns. We at one point, got good speed driving along a pack of kudu that were running, and actually felt like we were racing the kudu.

Soon after the kudu, we had an elephant sighting. The first sighting was brief, and the elephants disappeared from our vision and the road veered away. We kept on though, hoping and knowing it would be a short matter of time again until we would see more of the 400+ elephants within Addo. When you know something is there within the parameters of the reserve, it makes you really bound and determined to find it! Along the way we spotted big tortoise, birds, a kudu skeleton, warthogs and a small cat like animal that was really giving the birds overhead a scare. We had a variety of great elephant sightings, from the lone elephant who was pacing away from us along his trail, to the two elephants we watched wander in to the watering hole back near base camp. There were 3 elephants a bit off the road grazing as well, where a very brief appearance was made by a baby elephant.

Lunch was spent at the restaurant back at base camp. The restaurant had a fun lodge feel to it, with everyone sitting at heavy duty wood picnic tables. Grandpa had fish and chips, Grandma had a veggie burger, and I had garlic chicken penne pasta. After lunch we headed back out on the trail and were excited to find that the animals were really out and active. We saw many more warthogs, tortoise, as well as some ostrich. The afternoon reached an exciting finale when we found the lions we had eagerly been searching for throughout the day. 4 lions, a pride Grandpa informed us, were just off the road a ways stretched out, lazy and yawning. We sat and watched them for a while, as intrigued as the other cars and the tour bus stopped off along the trail watching and snapping photos.

While we did not see the water buffalo or snake Grandpa was hoping to see, I think we were all pretty thrilled with our sightings and photo collections! The drive back from Addo was relatively smooth, aside from getting slightly lost. We had dinner at a chinese restaurant near the B&B and the beach. We shared a pot of Chinese tea, and ordered the group entree combo. I, thinking I knew what I was ordering, ordered the prawn crackers for an appetizer, expecting something similar to shrimp toast to come out. We were indeed surprised when some pork rind looking multi-colored pastel styrofoam crisps came out on a plate. They were good though and worked well to dip in the soup. Dinner was a spring roll, egg fried rice, a sizzling beef dish, cashew prawns and a chicken dish. Dinner was enjoyed by all, and we left feeling full and tired after a full day of animal pursuits! We are not quite sure yet what the exact plan is for tomorrow, but morning will be here before I know it, so I am on my way to bed now so I can be fresh for whatever our next adventure is! Good night!