Addo Elephant Park

It has been a busy couple of day's, so this note will be another conglomeration of areas, events, experiences and pictures for you to enjoy.

As of this moment, we are departing Addo National Elephant Park.  If you reference the map, it is on the southeast of the country, near Port Elizabeth.  We got here by driving from Kruger Park to Johanessburg and flying over an hour and a half to Port Elizabeth (known as PE locally).  We spent a day and a half doing "game drives" in the park.  For those who think this is a relaxing vacation, we have gotten up at 5:30, 5:45 and 5:15 the past three days and not gone to bed until after 10 pm.  Fun, but not relaxing.

The highlight of this blog was spotting and observing the behavior of 4 male lions.  At one point a lion walked within 10 feet of the open vehicle in which we were traveling.  The picture on the blog is a very slight telephoto shot of an 8 year old male.  We saw a chase covering many miles demonstrating territorial behavior.  This park has open hills and scrub type vegetation, so we were able to observe the event with binoculars over the countryside.

Another highlight was a talk by a lead ranger of a Black Rhino reserve.  I have a picture of the ranger (the tall black women) with one of our leaders, Susan and another male ranger from Kruger Park.  She told us about life on a reserve, how it worked and the challenges in fighting poachers, especially those that kill black rhino's for their horns.  Unfortunately, in Vietnam the powdered rhino horns are prized for this alleged ability to alleviate hangover.  In truth, the horn is the same as the material in our fingernails.

On a similar, but different topic, Julie ordered venison last night for dinner.  It turned out to be Kudu (definitely not endangered) and very good.  The South African diet has a lot of meat and it is inexpensive and very good.  Afterwards, Julie serenaded the group on a rendition of Southern Cross (by Crosby, Stills and Nash) in honor of a dark star filled southern hemisphere night.  in case you could not guess, the wine in South Africa is inexpensive and plentiful, also.

Today we are headed to the coast and an area called the Garden Route.  Hopefully we will have some adventure activities and a little exercise tomorrow.