Our First Elephant

On Monday March 2, 2015 we saw elephants! It was an absolutely incredible day. We started planning our trip back in Cape Town where we met a friend of a friend, Kevin, who said his dad loves going to Addo and is a bit of a nature buff. To boot, he also loves taking people with him and educating them about the animals.

Kevin gave us his dad’s information and that’s how we found ourselves 7am on a Monday morning outside of the park gates, ready to go in. Anton turned out to be a wonderful guide. He’s got some serious eagle eyes, picking out animals that we could barely see (and correctly identifying them) from a mountain away. We saw lots of warthogs and their babies, zebras and their babies, a lone jackal running down the road, a couple of mongooses (mongeese?) trying to hide from us, kudu (looks like a deer but much bigger with bigger horns and beautiful markings), eland, and cape buffalo. We also saw a variety of birds including a yellow bokmakiere, glossy starling with its beautiful emerald coloring and startling orange eyes, a kite, and a couple of other raptors, and some vultures. Nick got to see the elusive dung beetle. We actually ended up seeing a few of them, and two of them were rolling their perfectly shaped balls of dung across the road.

Kudu

The Dung Beetle with its namesake

The boys playing

And of course we saw elephants, which was absolutely incredible. Our first elephant was a lone bull eating bushes by the roadside. The bush was incredible here; its so thick that a full grown elephant could be four meters off of the road and you’d have no idea. After our lone bull we saw a family of elephants. We saw mommas and their babies, and some teenage bulls that were tussling with each other. They’d lock tusks and push against each other. Then one would give and start to walk away, only to get hounded by the other, brushing up on his flanks and pushing him around until he was forced to engage again. It was a pretty entertaining show.

Aggressive Buffalo

Shortly thereafter we saw a lone Cape Buffalo. After the hippo, the Cape Buffalo is the second most dangerous animal in Africa. Evidently they’re heard animals until they get too old or violent and then they’re unceremoniously booted out of the heard. The one we saw, however, was not old so we were wondering if maybe he was a bit too violent and caused a bit too much mischief with the others. We were surprised at how they looked. Unlike the American Buffalo which is tall with skinny legs and a big body, this animal was much much stockier. It looked like a really really muscular pitbull but five feet tall with horns. This guy must have had an itch because he was rubbing his horns in a thorn bush for about ten minutes while we watched. After he was done, the bush was toast.

The funniest part of the day, however, had to be the second waterhole that we came across. There was a lone bull elephant standing in the center of this small waterhole, taking up almost the entire thing. He lazily sucked water up his trunk and then squirted it into his mouth. Sometimes he’d blow bubbles. The only animals that were brave enough to get near were a couple of warthogs and their babies (which are actually smaller than your average pig). An entire herd of Cape Buffalo came down the mountain looking for a drink, and only a handful of them got brave enough to drink so close to this elephant. You could almost see the Buffalo plotting a revolt against this elephant, he was outnumbered almost fifty-to-one, but they just timidly drank. A heard of zebra were also coming down to the hole for a refreshment but wouldn’t go anywhere near the elephant. They weren’t as patient as the buffalo, though. They pranced around the waterhole, playing with each other, or neighing nervously because of Mr. Elephante. A few minutes went by and off in the distance we see another elephant trotting up to the waterhole at a pretty good clip. All of the animals got out of its way except for one buffalo at the waterhole who must not have heard him. The first elephant got out of the hole to make room for his incoming friend, who swatted the last buffalo with his trunk, trumpeting his displeasure. That buffalo moved so fast to get out of the way that it almost tripped over his own hooves. It was really funny to watch.

Lone elephant taking over the watering hole

Password Please

Addo was an incredible last minute addition to our trip. We saw all of the animals listed with in an hour and a half of being within the park, but we stayed the entire day. We tried to find some lions, but no success. Still, it was really cool to see elephants just randomly show up on the road or through the bush, warthogs run through the grass with the tails sticking straight into the air like antennas, zebras arrogantly blocking our path, or kudu bounding across the road. Another huge thank you goes out to Anton for taking us out and showing us Addo Elephant National Park. It was an unforgettable experience.

Check out the video of our trip!