"Elephants, .Elephants, Elephants " a Addo Elephant National Park Travel Page by TRimer

When Joe and I began planning our honeymoon to South Africa, most people we spoke to assumed that we would go on safari. In fact, I spoke to a travel agent who tried to sell us a package to Kruger that started at $10k US just for the safari. We quickly decided that this was not in our budget for money or time (we only had 3 weeks to explore). I had also been on safari in Kenya as a child- so it was not such a novelty to me (although Kenya is more plains and S. Africa more of a brush/jungle type experience). Once we decided to stick to Cape Town and the coast area (a bonus as you don't need malaria pills which can make you sick), I started investigating different safari alternatives. Addo Elephant Park came with high accolades. We could drive there from the Garden Route and see animals up close.

One of the cool things about Addo is that you can drive your own vehicle into and around the park. This means that we had to actually move our Ford Fiesta to get out of the way of elephants crossing the road. We did take an escorted tour in a jeep- but it was hard to take pictures with rows of people in front of us- and we had to see what they wanted us to. With our car, we got to stay as long as we wanted seeing particular locations. So when we spotted the lions at a waterhole, we did not have to leave to make some tour timetable.