Addo Elephant Park - Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Charles and I left Knysna for Port Elizabeth last Tuesday. We spent the morning kayaking up and back down the Knysna river, where we spotted monkeys, baboons, and birds. The current moved almost imperceptibly, and water lilies opened slowly as the sun crept over the hills to touch them. And paddling through the cool morning reminded me a little bit of Arnold and my dad.

We spent about 30 minutes of our trip silently watching baby baboons play along the river banks. They were as curious about us as we were about them, and spent a lot of time climbing on the trees to get as close to use as possible. As soon as we started leaving, the furry little balls started following us along the banks to see where we were headed next. We took some video, and if it turns out well I'll share on this blog. 

After warming up with a quick lunch, we made the drive to Port Elizabeth, putting up with the absolutely miserable South Africa radio stations on our way. (Seriously, the only music available is US top 40 remixed with a "house music" backbeat. Nightmare.)

As our wonderful AirBnb hostess articulated, Port Elizabeth is a bit underrated. It's one of the only "real cities" on the Garden Route, with a population of 1.3 million. This means that it's not just a tourist destination--there's all kinds of things going on!

One of the absolute coolest things to do in Port Elizabeth is to go to Addo Elephant Park.

Addo is the third biggest national park in South Africa, and was our first chance to see wildlife in a more natural setting. Unlike game reserves, the animals at Addo aren't separated into cages to keep, say, the lions from eating the elephants. Tours were available, but we opted to do a self-drive. At the advice of our AirBnB hosts, we packed a picnic lunch and snacked all day while we drove ourselves around for about six hours.

As you can see from the photos, we saw elephants squabbling, showing off their junk, and bathing. Warthogs ended up being one of my favorite animals in the park, probably because they reminded me so much of Buddy. It was a pretty amazing day, and before we knew it, the sun was about to set.

I took so many photos from Addo Elephant Park and the game reserve we went to the following day that I decided to split them up. You'll see more in a few days, including (spoiler alert!) a baby rhino!

Much love to all of you!
Samantha & Charles