We woke up in Knysna on Friday morning with two more days to drive the Garden Route. We ended up spending nearly the entire day in Tsitsikamma National Park. It’s a beautiful preserve with a dramatic coastline of boulders and crashing waves. We took a trail along the coast called the Otter Trail, which took us through some lovely forest as well. It became tough going as the trail led down to the coast, where we had to scramble over boulders and rocks. We were sore and exhausted by the time we reached the trail’s end, a lovely waterfall where the Storms River meets the Indian Ocean. While it was a more difficult hike than we expected, it was quite worth it for the lovely views and the adventure.
We stumbled into our car, hungry and exhausted, and drove next to Jeffrey’s Bay, a famous surfing town. We were hoping to find some dinner, and stopped at a pizza place to see the menu. We were about to walk out and perhaps find somewhere else, when the owner informed us that in twenty minutes there would be a scheduled power outage for two and a half hours, and that we should order quickly if we wanted food. We decided it would be prudent to eat there, if the entire city was about to lose power. This explained why there had been power outages once a day since our arrival in South Africa–there are scheduled blackouts due to a power crisis in the country.
We had a small adventure trying to find the road to Addo in the fading evening light, and ended up rolling into the much larger city of Port Elizabeth after dark, where we are staying at the extremely charming Hippo Hostel. The owners were away when we arrived, and suggested we go the Boardwalk Casino to kill time. Whatever we were expecting from this casino, we were quite suprised when we arrived. It was a very stylish commercial area, a boardwalk with restaurants, bars, arcades, stores, and rides. The casino was very upscale. We thought we might spend a few Rand playing slots, but discovered that you had to register for a gaming card in order to gamble.
This morning, we got back in our trusty rental and headed to Addo Elephant National Park, about 50 km north of Port Elizabeth. Coming from this direction it was easy to find. A lot of people do guided safaris, but seeing as we had a car and have already booked a guided trip in the Serengeti, we decided we’d try our luck on our own. We drove into the park, fingers crossed that we might see some wildlife.
We came to a watering hole after sighting a couple of Kudu, a kind of antelope, and Tommy stopped the car. I began to peer through my binoculars at some shapes in the distance.
“Are those elephants?” Tommy asked.
“No,” I said, “They’re ostriches.”
“Not those,” he said, pointing as I lowered my binoculars. “Those.”
I looked, and my mouth fell open. Coming straight towards us in the distance was a herd of elephants, more than I could conveniently count. They were stirring up an immense cloud of red dust. I fumbled for the camera and began frantically snapping pictures. They came closer and closer, and finally converged on the small puddle of a watering hole we were parked in front of. We couldn’t believe how close they came; less than 100 yards from the car. We took so many pictures we had to put a new SD card in our camera. They were magnificent, and so much fun to watch. They began to wallow in the watering hole, rolling around and splashing themselves with their trunks. They stayed there at least a half an hour, and we stayed there as well, transfixed. Finally, they seemed to make a collective decision to move on. We smiled as three or four adults had to use their trunks to help a clumsy youngster out of the water.
I never thought I would say the words, “Oh, keep driving, it’s just another elephant,” but it happened quite frequently today. That first encounter set the pace for an amazing time in the park. We saw zebras, kudu, hartebeest, warthogs, ostriches, countless small birds, flightness dung beetles, and tons of elephants. They came close to the cars without fear or agression. Our favorite encounter was rounding a bend and finding a massive male in the middle of the road. I was afraid it might approach the car, but we backed out of its way, and it merely strolled by, its feet making gentle scraping noises against the dirt road. It was truly spectacular. We were only sorry we didn’t see rhinos or lions, the park’s more elusive residents.
We stayed nearly until the park closed, and then drove back to Port Elizabeth. We decided to save some money and cook a dinner at the hostel, so we set out in search of a supermarket. We found a tiny place with a relatively good selection and began discussing what we could make when one of the workers came up to us. He told us that most of the food in the store had been sitting there for a year or more, and that there was a supermarket with a much better selection right down the street. He gave us excellent directions. Grateful but very confused, we went there and bought ingredients for a delicious vegetable curry. Our evening was spent editing the 400-something photos we snapped in the park today.