Addo Elephant National Park

  April 2018

In April this year,  we were lucky enough to have Steve and Chris, our cruising buddies from “Scott Free”, (with whom we must have sailed about 10 000miles!) fly out from the UK to spend nearly a month with us. Having done all the typical Cape Town touristy “musts”, we squeezed in a trip up to Addo, with detours via Cape Aghulas, Garden Route, Prince Alfred Pass, and various wine regions!

Priscilla's rooftop tent was replaced by two waterproof transit bags for our luggage so there was plenty of room for the four of us and a fridge for all the important things like beer, wine and meat for the braais.

This trip to Addo was a first for Mary and me, and we wanted to give our mates a real taste of African wildlife. We spent a night in the Matyholweni camp in the south, the next in the tented Spekboom camp, the 3^rd at the Addo Main camp, and an indulgent last night at the newly opened, luxurious and very quirky Nyathi camp in the north!

We were very pleasantly surprised, and as can be seen from the photos which follow, not short of things to see and enjoy.......especially ellies!

Lucky sighting.....very few lions in the park

Red Hartebees - crazy eyes?

The large herds of buffalo are
 Foot and Mouth Disease free

Glossy Starlings were everywhere

Speckled mousebird

The first of many ellies.
It was so great to see them so close and very relaxed

Bokmakierie

Sometimes I just sits and thinks!!

OOPS!

Lesser Doubled Collared Sunbird quietly sitting near our tent

Get out of my space!

Olive Woodpecker

Pale Chanting Goshawk

Very common pose...Lean on me brother!

A bit of argie bargie amongst the youngsters

Lots of very cute babies 

Having a little refreshment!

Throwing a bit of mud around

Thats quite a weight to carry around
 and I'm not really embarrassed!

The very special Kgalagadi!

29 March 2018

Earlier this month, Mary and I set off in a fully loaded Priscilla, to revisit one of our all-time favourite places…… The Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park. We had last been there 14 years ago, but this time were planning an overlapping trip with Kim and Steve in their own fully equipped off road Hilux. The overlapping was brought about largely as a result of us having booked 6 months ago, and K & S having booked whatever vacancies they could find during the same time period, starting in Feb. Kim logged on to the Sanparks site daily, for any cancellations, and by combining our schedules we ended up with a wonderful mixture of 5 common nights, and 5 days during which we each went our own ways, meeting up again a day or two later to brag about our sightings!

The pictures which follow, show exactly what makes the Kgalagadi so special …. It was still very hot, and very much greener than we have seen before, being at the end of the rainy season, which also allows the game to drift further away from the river beds. I have taken the liberty of including about 8 of Steve’s photos, (lions, leopards, Tawny eagle with prey), as we were not lucky enough to see lions or leopards! We on the other hand were very lucky with Cheetah. Between us we saw almost everything the park has to offer, including Brown Hyena, Spotted Hyena, Eland, Meerkats and Honey Badgers, Cape Fox, Bat Eared Foxes, and Genets, even though they are not included in the photos!

Thanks to Steve for the following:

What a wonderful world!