Addo Holiday Phone Snaps

After many months of planning, the packing ended and the road trip to the Eastern Cape started.  We departed before sunrise to get away from the traffic, and it was a good call.  As we were heading away from Cape Town, we were lucky to spot a lonely hot air balloon floating over us.  It was a great omen to a good start for our holiday.  What a perfect setting with the sun rising up from behind Simonsberg Mountain!

Its a long road to Addo, so we decided to break it up over two days.  Our first stop was Wilderness National Park.  This is one of the nicest camps we have visited in a long time and would recommend it to anyone, even as a holiday destination.

 Below is the nest of a Spotted Thick Knee.  She laid her eggs on the verge of the tarred main road.  We decided to help her out a bit and added this big rock on the left to assist with a little extra protection from possibly being run over.

There were very few Dung Beetles in the park, but we did hear from a local that there was a Dung Beetle farm near by.  We hope this will help their plight for the future indeed.

 Addo has so many many placed to visit, other than the actual park itself, and we tried to visit a few of these special Addo-add-on’s.  Woody Cape is one of them, it was a 75km ride to get there, but definitely worth the drive.

Another very special destination around Port Elizabeth is Cape Recife light house.  The beach with its beautiful setting of dune-like sand, oyster catchers and a pre-frontal cloud made for a great photographic destination.

Addo Main Camp was for us by far superior to the Matyholweni Camp.  One of the reasons was that here we had a view over the valley.  We were very fortunate to have a challet right on the main fence line.  It proved to be very exciting as we could hear the lions roaring right outside our bungalow.  We were also entertained by the vast amount of conditioned visiting wild birds.  One in particular was the Green Bull feeding her Black Cuckoo chick.  The poor baby was twice the size as mom and mom was working up a sweat to keep the youngster well fed.

Our perfectly situated chalet also proved to be a great spot for when one wants to catch up on a few emails or edit some photos.

 On our way home we stopped in at Super Tubes beach in Jeffreys Bay.  They have kitted the beach out with a lovely boardwalk and a few touristy type shops to cater for the many outside visitors to this popular beach.