Addo Elephant Park

We got ourselves checked into the chalet style hut which on first impressions were very well done. They all had BBQ’s ready for the nights meat feast..

To preface all the rest of the Addo post it’s fair to say we saw plenty of wildlife.. A quick vote sees Elephants, Caracal (Kinda like a Lynx) and Spotted Eagle Owls as the top scorers… Here’s some photos..















and the accompanying check list...



We headed out on the first of the drives round the park. You can essentially drive yourself round or take one of the Safari tours, but we decided to begin with we’d drive round and head up to the main camp to books ourselves some morning and night escorted drives.

So if you’re in the bush you’ve got to have a BBQ meat feast.



So in no way do I consider myself a 'bushman', but growing up in the lakes you’d like the think that the wild doesn’t prove too much of a problem. How very wrong I am..

So we bedded down for the night in out lovely thatched cottage.. 11pm comes round and I suddenly find myself awake having heard rustling. Light on, delirious searching – nothing to be seen…So let’s try again..5 minutes later the same rustling, this time I had to find out what was going on? Bats?……Mice?….Scorpians?… – light on, suddenly I see a 5 inch tail disappear under the blinds.. we then hear ‘chattering’ in the thatch and catch sight of another furry friend on another beam… At this point both me and Nicky are in a kind of half awake half asleep mode. And then comes ‘underpants change time’ when we catch sight of a spider the size of a small dog sitting watching us…

At this point all rational decision making has evaporated and we elect that sleeping in the car is the only solution…

5 am comes and we wake for our early morning game drive as we emerge from the car with stoops like Albert Steptoe. I think we both need to go on some kind of wildlife rehab.

So then we had a full day of driving round the park. Starting with the early 6:30 drive then followed by a drive round in the car, punctuated by a sleep and then onto a night drive. The good thing was that on each drive we saw new things so even through we covered off the same ground it was still pretty interesting. The Night drive was probably the best as you got to see smaller animals that you don’t associate with the standard ‘Big-5’, but almost more interesting. Jackal, Spotted Eagle Owl and Spring Hares being notables.