Addo Elephant Park

Visited the Addo Elephant Park today for another Safari animal sighting ride. The day started out a little cold, rainy and windy but ended up having a really nice afternoon. We got to see a few new animals while on this excursion.

First was the Hartebeest which is a grassland antelope.

                                           We saw Sable which have gotten to be fairly rare.

Birds we saw included the Cape Weaver, Boken, and Egyptian Geese.

We saw many of the now old familiar ones like Kudu, Zebra, Cape Buffalo and Wart Hogs.

Some in the group kept asking me to step back a little farther. Hmmmmm!

Then as we were leaving the park kind of disappointed we hadn't seen the elephants, there they were. It was so neat to sit and watch them as they rolled in the mud, drank and sprayed water, ran across the field, and jostle each other around flapping their ears.

We got back to town in time to walk along the beach. I have now put my feet in the Indian Ocean!

I liked the uniques sea wall that ran along the beach.

                                 There were some surfers taking advantage of the big waves.

Hluhluwe Safari

After another early wake up call this morning we left to go on a Safari ride through Hluhluwe Umfolozi Game Reserve. It is the oldest established park in Africa and is where conservationists have made a successful effort to preserve the white rhino. The park has the highest concentration of white rhinos in the world.

We also saw a lot of giraffe. Love how graceful they look while eating and walking. The women
loved the eyelashes.

We were fortunate enough to see a pack of wild African dogs. We were told that the dogs are rarely seen are becoming endangered because they leave the reserve to hunt and the locals kill them to protect their cattle and other animals. They look similar to hyenas with spotted coats but have a distinctive white tail. Notice the collar transmitters on some them. That is so the park can track them and try to collect them before they are killed should they leave the reserve.

Also saw some monkeys and a few birds.

We also observed a large herd of wildebeest roaming.

I loved the terrain of this park. It was really hilly and just looked like what I had pictured in my mind Africa would look like.

Nyala ( in the Antelope family)

After the park we went to St. Lucia Estuary where we took a boat cruise and had our lunch. The estuary is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We observed a lot of hippos and even spotted some crocodiles sunning on the bank.

This is a Bush Buck, which are rare and hard to spot in the wild.

The group taking our breakfast stop. We were given breakfast boxes since we had to leave so early.