Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Monday, April 23, 2012
We were up at 5 for our early morning guided game drive. We had taken blankets from our room as we thought it might we cold and boy were we glad. Marion and I had our pick of seats being the only ones to show up at such an early hour. It was heaps of fun driving in the dark, looking for eyes in the flashlight. We saw the usual ostrich, impala, warthog, jackals as well as a red civit or caracul hunting for birds. Also one lone hyena so even though we didn’t see lion we were pleased. Apparently there are 9 lion in that part of the park living in 3 groups. They are now all under contraception as they bred too fast and ate whatever they wanted rather than just the impala, warthogs and ostrich they were supposed to. The impala are apparently really clever and the guide told us that on private neighbouring farms I winter hunting of one impala per hunter is allowed, apparently they have a huge migration of “illegals” who jump the fence into the park for safety and then leave when hunting season is over
. Rhino poaching is huge, so location of rhino is kept top secret – our guide told us that they have lost 159 this year already –we are not sure if that is in all the national parks or just ADDO. Interestingly elephants tusks are not in demand so they are not victim to poachers.
After breakfast we did another sortee out – saw many elephants and were thrilled each time, especially later in the day whilst sitting at a water hole and a big bull came down to drink.. Whilst sitting there we saw a whole clan of meercats playing in the long grass – popping their heads up from time to time to see what is happening.
Funniest moment: Dung Beetles are protected and there are lots of notices asking one to not drive over them. We were following a silver back jackal down the road and I just commented that the next one we saw crossing the road, we should stop the car, open the door lean out and photograph one. At that moment we spotted one and I yelled dung beetle. To our surprise before we could get there , the jackal trotted over to it and in front of our eyes popped it in his mouth, swallowed and carried on walking!! How rude is that!!
Our search for lion was not successful even tough others had spotted them in the day. Our night drive no more successful however we were thrilled when 3 elephant came right down to the waterhole in front of our rondawel to drink lae in the afternoon.