Elephants in Addo

After posting my last blog in Jeffrey's bay I headed down to the sea front, there were so many dolphins jumping out of the water, I've never seen anything like it! But unfortunatley it wasn't long before I had to leave and head to Sunday's River Valley where I would be spending the night. I'm really looking forward to returning to Jeffreys Bay. We arrived at Sundays River Valley at around 3pm, such an incredible location. The area is all citrus fruit farms and we were surrounded by orange and lemon trees. My room had a really nice balcony with incredible views, not another building for miles. I sat there until sunset just watching the monkeys playing in the trees and listening to the crickets, I could have stayed forever. After dinner I headed to bed as we had a really early start on Thursday. There was an absolutely enormous cricket in my room, I had to practically wrestle it to the ground bafore throwing it out the window! Had a great nights sleep and getting up at 5 wasn't as hard as I thought it would be! I was so excited to finally be on my way to see some Elephants!! We arrived at Addo just before 6am and had a 2 hour game drive in an open topped truck. It was really cold, but as soon as we started to see the animals I didn't notice. First we saw Kudu (Which I later has for lunch!) then Ostrich, Black Backed Jackels, Mongoose ( I don't know the plaural.... Mongeese, mongooses... or just Mongoose.... I'm giving you multiple choice!!)Meerkats, Warthogs, Zebra... It was about 45 minutes in before we saw our first Elephant. It was a huge male and I mean huge. It was so much bigger than I expected! (I have seen elephants in real life before, but not like this!) He walked straight past me and if I held out my arm (Which I wasn't aloud to do!) I would have been able to touch him. I could feel my heart beating really fast, I've never felt anything like it before. We watched him dissapear into the bush. This was by far the most incredible experience of my life. When we got back to base Moddy took us out twice more and we were lucky with the weather, as it was nice we saw so many elephants. All the females and the young at the watering hole, the females are much more social than the males, when the males reach 10-13 years old and hit puberty they are forced out to the group to avoid and inbreading. Last week the oldest male and on of the younger males had a fight. The oldest male was killed and the younger died shortly afterwards. We saw the remains, which was only bones, the rest had been eaten by the Lions and Hyenas. It was a bit sad to see, but that's nature I guess.
I had a really amazing day and thoroughly enjoyed myself. We headed to Port Elizabeth where we would be spending the night. I went into the city for a look around but felt really unsafe for the first time since I have been here, I didn't like it at all so headed back to the Backpackers where I ended up having a Birthday Eve party until the wee hours! Next Stop - Walking with Elephants!

George, South Africa