Addo Elephant Park
South Africa – December 29-31, 2018
Guess what animals are prevalent in Addo Elephant National Park? I hope the name was sufficiently clear. There are several hundred elephants in the park so it is almost impossible to not see them while visiting. Because this is the middle of summer in the southern hemisphere, it is getting dry. That means most of the animals stay close to a water hole. The elephants especially like water holes so they can keep themselves cool. It’s fun to see them rolling around in the water and mud as they try to cool off. I was watching a large group that were submerging themselves in the deep part of the pond. As they were walking out, the little baby appeared.
While driving through the park it is very easy to spot the trails the various animals use for walking around. The elephants really aren’t afraid of people or cars, so a lot of times they take the easy route which just happens to be the roads. When that happens, human traffic just has to stop and wait. The park has slow speed limits to try and keep people from driving too fast and therefore not having enough time to stop before running over a small animal. There is a species of dung beetle that is endemic to the park and it is endangered. There are road signs all over the place telling drivers to not drive over the piles of elephant dung in the road because the beetles might get crushed. The frequent piles also make for slow driving, but I never saw any of the beetles.
When the animal trails cross a road, it’s easy to just hang out and wait for the animals to get close. You just have to judge where to stop the car based on how likely the animal is to feel nervous about walking close to you. Elephants don’t get nervous about much. So when I saw this one walking across some open grassland and saw the trail was going to cross the road, I stopped as close to the trail crossing as I thought would be safe for both of us. When the elephant arrived, it paused while standing in the middle of the road to look at me while I was sitting in the car. Then it moseyed on down the trail.
Summer is prime time for most animals to have their young, so babies are everywhere. Baby zebras are adorable.
The big tortoise was definitely not a baby. Not being a specialist, I have no way of accurately guessing how old a large tortoise is. But I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that tortoise was at least 60 years old or even older. The big species don’t grow that quickly, so the big ones have to be old.
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Because the animals have to find water, that narrows down the region where the predators have to look for them. Two lions were relaxing in the shade near a dry water hole in the south of the park. The other lion is hidden in the grass behind this one. Given how the nearby hole was dry, they might be waiting a while before any herds of animals arrive.
