Addo
Posted: 2/6/2005 10:00 PM (Permalink)
On the 10th of January we went to our first game reserve, Addo National Park. Addo is the elephant park. They have over 400. The way it works is you go to the front gate and pay your entrance fee, then you drive to the gift shop place. Right from the parking lot, you see your first elephants.
The park is completely wild. It’s sort of like a zoo but the animals are not separated and they fend for themselves just like they would in the wild.
After loading up on souvenirs and food at the gift shop, you get back in the car and drive to the animal gate. At that point, you are in with the animals. That means, in addition to the elephants, warthogs, ostriches, buffalo, many varieties of antelope and even lions. We only drove a short while before we saw our first elephants up close. A mother and her baby.
You can tell how close we are because you can see the road we are driving on there. Animals (even the little dung beetles) have the right of way here.
You are only allowed to get out of your car at designated areas. These are usually situated near watering holes where the animals spend their time. Check out the sign.
Here’s a little vervet monkey running across the road in front of the car.
These guys are considered pests here (think intelligent rats with opposable thumbs), but they really are quite cute I think.
The highlight of the park was the elephant blind. You get out of the car and go into a fenced in area. It’s sort of like an anti-zoo; the animals are on the outside and you are looking at them from inside the fence. You look out through little holes in the wall at about two dozen elephants frolicking around.
This is the place where the primates watch the elephants.
On the way out of the park, we came to a place where there were a lot of cars looking at something so of course we had to check it out. I got out the binoculars to see what the fuss was about and saw a couple of lions. We drove down to about 100 feet away and got a single photo.
That was pretty exciting, but there was even better things to come...