Addo Elephant National Park Animal Drive

The following blog post was written on the evening of the 2nd of August in the car driving on the Garden Route to Knysna, South Africa

This morning we woke up early, which is not really that huge of an accomplishment when you consider our 9:30pm bedtime the night before, so we could participate in a morning animal drive through Addo Elephant National Park. The animal drives start on the other side of the park at the Main Camp, since we were at the Matyholweni Camp we had to high-tail it over to the drive-which we did (but there was a unsettling even that occurred on the way, which I will write about in the next post-which will be titled “Death Tour 2008”).

We paid our 180R per person and climbed into the open air vehicle to find out that we were the only people signed up for the morning drive, it was like a personal tour for the three of us!

As we made our way through the park by a knowledgeable guide it was impossible not to be impressed by the beauty of the park. Although the park does have ten lions, we were not lucky enough to see one this morning. However, we did see a whole host of other animals.

Warthogs: We saw of ton of these guys, which do a funny little prance when they are trying to walk quickly. They manage to be incredibly ugly, but endearingly sweet at the same time.

Elephants: We saw a great deal of elephants. They are huge; I cannot get over the sheer size of full grown elephants. Adult males can weight up to 7 tons, which is crazy to think about. For this reason they rarely lay down, since it is so hard to get up again, and they walk and run always leaving three feet on the ground. Elephants also only sleep 2-3 hours a day and never at once, they might nap for about 10 minutes and then wake up and immediately start eating again. In order to feed their massive bodies they can be found eating about 20-22 hours a day.

Buffalo: They have a strange horn-like-hat thingy on their heads. It was exciting to see them, actually, I never imagined they would be so neat looking in person and they are part of the “Big 5” everybody hopes to see while in Africa. We were also told that they are one of the only animals that will give absolutely no indication prior to attacking, unlike other animals that will demonstrate warning or angry behavior first.

Kudu: These huge antelope have beautiful horns, which you can use to help determine their age (at about 2 ½ years their horns will make a complete turn-after three turns the tips start to turn white). They are also incredible jumpers, capable of jumping 2 meters standing still and 3 meters from a run. These means they are able to jump over the park fence and come/go as they please.

Red Hartbeest: The second fastest antelope in South Africa, they are named for the reddish color of their coat and the heart shape of their horns. They are incredibly sweet looking.

Spotted Hyena: Although we did not see an adult, we saw a very young hyena pup peaking out of it’s borrow. Baby spotted hyenas are solid dark brown in color, earning their spots in time. White we were watching a bird landed near the pup and totally freaked it out, which was a little funny.

Ostrich: These huge birds are so odd looking at beautiful at the same time. Too bad they are pretty stupid.

Bokmakierie: This beautiful bird has such shockingly bright green and yellow feathers it is hard to believe you are seeing something made my nature!


One thing that we didn’t see, but saw a lot of signs about was the flightless dung beetle. It is illegal in the National Park to run over animal dung because the beetle digs into the dung to lay its eggs and the beetle is protected, therefore making the poop protected as well.