Elephants, lots of Elephants

Last week I went to the Addo Elephant National Park with a bunch of other American turistas, a few Canadians, and a Scottish girl. The trip was organized by one of the local hostels. They do day and weekend trips all over the area (insert link here).

At first I felt a little bit out of place. Most of the other students had all met during the international students’ orientation (that I missed) and all seemed to know each other pretty well, but by the end I felt much more comfortable.

We pilled into two vans and began our drive to Addo, which is about 1-1 ½ drive from Grahamstown. Everything was pretty uneventful until we were pulled over for a random check. The police woman just stood in the middle of the lane and waved us over to stop, it seemed totally bizarre. She took his paperwork, walked around the vehicle, seeming to be looking for something incriminating, and then asked him for some more paper work. He didn’t have it. She then had him go across the road to fill out some more paper work.

Our driver also works as a bartender at the hostel where many of the Americans hang out, so this was all sort of comical, and an interesting comparison of how differently the police interact here. Needless to say, we took pictures of our friend getting a ticket.

They gave him a ticket for not having documentation for being able to drive a van with a lot of passengers, which he can contest because he does have permission, jus didn’t have the paper work. Then we drove off, saw a giraffe on the side of the road, and then the cops came up behind us flashing their lights. They’d written something down wrong and chased us down to get it. Bizarre.

Once at the park we drove around for several hours, mostly staring out the window searching for signs of life. There were loads of warthogs everywhere. They are so ugly they’re cute, in my opinion. We saw some zebras, which were beautiful. The ostrich seemed a little ragged, and there were lots of kudu (in the antelope family) as well as dung beetles. Dung beetles have the rite of way on all roads in the park because they are such an important part of the ecosystem.

It was getting close to lunch and we still hadn’t seen an elephant. We met up with the other van, who had apparently seen several elephants up close, and started to head back to the picnic area for a cook out (braai). Then, I spotted an elephant on the side of the road. The other van missed it and kept going, but we backed up and it walked out of the bushes in front of our van and crossed the road. Yep, definitely a proud moment in my life. We were able to hold our heads high during lunch having also seen an elephant up close.

<--- My elephant.

We went back out after lunch and saw several more elephant, including a Momma and baby elephant walking down the road.


It was a great adventure.