Today is my 42th birthday and I am celebrating it far away from home and I am deeply happy. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate this day than sitting on the porch having dinner with my family, while a group of elephants is slowly making their way down from the hill towards the water pool in front of our house.
We spend the last week of our South Africa trip in the Addo Elephant National Park. Addo is the largest wildlife reserve in the Cape area and is famous for its elephants. This was my fourth visit to Addo and every time I visit it is getting better. Originally, back in the 1930’s, Addo was established as a home to protect the last eleven elephants in this area and to save them from being hunted. This became a huge success and today there are over 600 elephants in the park. Recently the park has been extended and Addo is now the third largest national park in South Africa and is home to the big five (lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino & leopard), although rhino and leopards are hardly seen in the main section of the park.
Well, I think we have seen all the elephants and some of them more than once. On our first day in the park we came at a waterhole and there were over one hundred elephants gathered together. An amazing sight to see so many of these giants together. The kids got bored after watching them for half an hour, but I could have stayed there the whole day to see them play in the water and interacting with each other. Luckily we did see large groups of elephants again the next day, and the next and the next…… In the hot and dry summer elephants need to drink lots of water and the only sources that have not dried up are the watering holes, so it is logical to find them there, but these large groups were special and we had never seen such large herds before.
The whole week in Addo was amazing and everyday there was at least one sighting that made me say wooow. Something special that you don’t see often. One afternoon we drove around a corner and saw a meerkat family posing in the afternoon sun. Or on another early morning we saw a troop of five hyena’s in the water, eating their kill that they apparently had dragged into the water. But the best sighting was this morning, my birthday present. The whole week we had been looking for lions. But there are only 11 lions in Addo and most of them live in the southern section of the park, that is not easily accessible from the camp. But two male lions were often seen closer to the camp and I had been hoping to spot them. This morning I woke-up at 5:15, got Lucas out of bed and with the two of us we went on an early morning drive. Lions are mostly active at night, so the best time to see them is at dawn or dusk. But unfortunately we did not spot them. After two hours driving we returned to the house to have breakfast. After breakfast we got back in the car with the four of us for another mid morning drive and whilst driving on the main tarred road, we suddenly saw the two male lions. They were sleeping in the middle of the road and we could do nothing else than park the car and watch them. A great birthday present.
This marks the end of our South Africa journey and from here we fly to Sydney, our next (short) stop. It has been great to be back in South Africa and experience this special place with our kids and make this the start of our adventure. South Africa has a special place in my heart and it was a privilege to be able to share this with my family. Now it is time to move on and explore new places and continue our adventure on the other side of the world.
Taco