Addo Elephant Park

Port Elizabeth seemed to be a nice city but we’ll never really know as we headed straight out of it to Addo Elephant National Park, about 2 hours into the interior.

Near to the port we saw these dolos (A dolos is a reinforced concrete block in a complex geometric shape weighing up to 80 tonnes, used in great numbers as a form of coastal management to build revetments for protection against the erosive force of waves from a body of water) and were reminded that they were invented by a man from East London (I forgot to mention yesterday that the museum there also featured that story!) but, sadly, because he neglected to register a patent he never benefitted from their very wide use all over the world.

    Notice our ship on the right. We are the last ship of the season in every port here. The tour guides are sad!

As always, I took some pictures for you as we drove out and back so you could see the countryside.

                                                          That’s an ostrich, by the way, not a cow.

The terrain and the vegetation at Addo were totally different from yesterday’s park and we were thrilled that the animals we saw were all different, too.

The camouflage of these large animals always amazes me. At first I thought we would be hard pressed to see even one animal in the dense growth that made up most of this park but eventually we did see them both along the road and in the clearings.

The 700 elephants in Addo today are all the descendants of the eleven original animals in that area when the national park was created with the intension of preserving what was there. They appear to be red because of the mud that they roll in. And it’s amazing how easy it is for a huge red elephant to hide!

But they did come out of hiding sometimes and we got up close and personal with only a little bit of fear.

We saw beautiful kudu antelope (hopefully it was not this particular one which I ate later this evening) but they were so quick that it was hard to photograph them.

The warthogs were a surprise. We hadn’t thought that we’d see any. They are ugly, as usual, but interesting in how they kneel to eat.

It’s hard to decide which were my favorite animals at Addo. The elephants, of course, were impressive in their size and their almost human-like way of protecting their young, and the Cape Buffalo were beautiful in their own way — hooves pounding the earth as they raced to slake their thirst (and watching carefully over their young, as well).

But if I’m honest (and strange, I know) I’d have to say that the dung beetles were the most exciting to see. Therefore, I shall regale you with a few too many pictures. Like bats and snakes, which people generally don’t like, the dung beetles are a beneficial part of their eco-system. They eat the things that you would rather not! There are many species of dung beetles, one of which is what you probably know as the sacred scarab of Egyptian art and history. The ones in Addo aren’t that beautiful but they sure are interesting. They deal with two kinds of dung (sorry I forgot which is which but you probably don’t really care anyway). The one which is soft enough for the larva to eat is the one on which they lay their eggs. The one which is harder the adults eat. In both cases they collect the dung and by means of amazing acrobatic feats (some pictured below) they roll it into perfect balls up to the size of a tennis ball, thus to bury it for later use before it dries out too much. Enjoy!

                                              Notice here that he is doing this upside down.

There’s more to say about these amazing insects but I’ll leave it at that. They made my day!