Optional Activities: Night Game Drive with SANP.
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
15th December 2013
The drive to Addo Elephant Park was a normal drive for South Africa, sometimes the roads were bumpy sometimes the able roads were great, I will say that there are lots of road works going on here in South Africa.
On the way to Addo Elephant Park we saw the disparity between rich and poor, on one side of the road there was some Mc Mansions and the other basically sticks covered with plastic tarps. What really amazed me was from talking to Michael, (the fountain of knowledge on all things Germany) I learnt that Germany has a population of just over 81million with a total size of 357,000klm square , whilst South Africa has just over 51 million people and has a total size of 1.22 million klm's square and Australia has a population of just under 23 million and has a total size of 7.692 million klm's square. When I think about the numbers I wonder how it seems so many people here live in such poverty.
We were really lucky to get to do a game drive in Otis as apparently large vehicles are usually restricted in the areas they can access in Addo Elephant National Park, nice work Owen.
We saw a bull elephant hogging a man made waterhole, he had his trunk stuck over the water inlet and was sucking up the water as it appeared. He would not share with the nearby zebra, but as an elephant herd came over he let them drink. The elephant family was almost running to get to the water, and when they reached it the babies climbed into the shallow pool to play around. This was followed by some rolling around on the ground as the adults grazed. Very cute!
We then went to a picnic area for lunch, it was fenced off for safety. Rimson produced hotdogs for us, which were very popular. While we were having lunch we were joined by a few Red Beaked Francolin, I tried to feed Christina to one, but Christina resisted.
After lunch we continued on our game drive through the park, we saw the usual suspects - zebra, kudu, impala as well as lots more elephants - great! As we headed towards the boundary of Addo Park we saw a very large bull elephant with a huge set of tusks standing alone in the distance in a grassy area. We waited and watched and were very lucky, as he chose to walk towards us, and then pass on by, so we all got a fantastic view of him. He had a tracking collar on, and Owen said he was probably introduced to improve the gene pool, as Addo's elephants have recovered from near extinction and have small tusks due to their genetics. The Elephants were considered pests by the Orange Farmers, so they hired a hunter to kill them all, only 16 survived in 1920 now its estimated the population is around 450 to 500 elephants.
Owen told us an interesting story about what can happen when to male Kudu's decide to have a tussle over the ladies... sometimes their horns get tangled up and then if they can't get them unlocked they will die like that. So whilst were on the topic of the males of the species fighting for the females attention, we saw a male ostrich trying to win over a very special lady, but she couldn't care less in fact she kept running away. I gave him my advice but alas he wasn't listening he was to busy dancing and then running after her.
We were supposed to stay in the National Park Campsite but they were fully booked, so we went to the Aardvark Backpackers just outside the park boundary.
We camped again!!! believe it or not, there were no upgrades available. It was the last night for several family members (Simone and Jan, Diane and Christina, Hartwig and Ulla), so we had a special dinner and some speeches, very sad but we have some great memories of all of them.
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