As most of the Addo Elephant National Park is made up of what used to be farmlands, big parts of the park consist of open fields. Addo has embarked on a project where locals are used to plant spekboom on these fields to help and bring the natural bush back quicker. Spekboom (sometimes referred to as elephant bush as the ellies love to eat them) is an indigenous succulent bush and grows very easily and quickly, making it the ideal plant…
Addo Elephant National Park is looking stunning after all the rain the area had during winter and spring. The veld is green with swaths of yellow flowers and purple fygies while there are a lot young animals about as well. Unfortunately my visit was a quick one for business so I didn't have time to take a nice leisurely drive through the park. Hopefully I'll get that chance again soon.
Addo Elephant National Park is such an awesome place and probably the best place in the world to view wild African elephants fairly up close from within your own car. This young bull was having a drink at Gwarrie Dam on my last visit and I kinda wish I could just plonk a camp chair next to the dam and sit and enjoy the place with him.
The aloes are in full bloom and where ever you go around the Eastern Cape its bright orange flowers are visible. These are next to the walkway by the lookout over the Addo Elephant National Park's main camp waterhole.
One of Addo Elephant National Park's bulls eying the guy behind the camera aiming at him
Elephants need to eat about between 160 and 200kg of vegetation per day which means that they basically eat all day as they go. For them, life is on long buffet.
One of the easiest ways to find out where the animals in Addo Elephant Natinal Park can be found is by having a look at the game viewing road map in the main rest camp of the park. Visitors to the park can mark on the map where they have seen the "main" animals and although its not always reliable its a good indication where to head to once you drive into the park.
The Addo Elephant National Park's main restcamp has a water hole just below the parking area where visitors can sit and relax while watching the elephants and other animals come down to drink. Most tourists entering the park normally head straight to the lookout to see if they can glimpse their first elephant, but sometimes it's just nice to sit down, relax and take in the surroundings.
Hapoor Waterhole is the most popular water(ing) hole in Addo Elephant National Park for the locals (both males and females) to hang out at and as they don't serve alcoholic drinks the littlies are also welcome.
Visitors to the Addo Elephant National Park often go home with stories of magnificent elephant sightings and sometimes have an awesome story to tell of how an elephant walked so close past their car that you could reach out and touch him (just don't actually go and do it). On a good day you could also tick buffalo, lion and perhaps even black rhino off your "spotting the Big 5 list", but not often can one say that you had more than one…