Day 13 - Addo

A reasonably bright start sees us heading east along what’s left of the Garden Route and then eventually turning north to head for Crislin Lodge, an eco friendly mud hut type resort to the north of Port Elizabeth. A short journey for us, about 3 hours and we arrive pretty exhausted. We don’t hang around though as the reason for being here is to visit the Addo Elephant Park, a quick turn around and we’re back on the road again. 10 minutes later we’ve paid our money and enter the park. This park is massive and we start off driving slowly but eventually pick up speed as we search for the wildlife. We see kudu, wildebeest, water hogs, dung beetles, springboks etc but no elephants yet. The park consists of fairly high bushes that meet the road, very few trees and the odd waterhole or two. Because of this visibility is quite difficult and the view into the bush is restricted to about twenty feet or so apart from the odd viewpoint that enables you to park up and view the rolling landscape. These stops are all accompanied by signs that tell you to ‘Beware of Lions’ and that stepping out of the car is at your own risk! Because of the restricted view across the bush when you do see the wildlife its invariably right next to you and can be quite a surprise, and that’s how e do start to see our first elephants! Up close, at the side of the road and invariably chewing the leaves on the bushes is how the elephants entertain us for the next two or three hours. And then we have a real close encounter! I’m driving and we are parked at a kind of crossroads in the bush watching a rather large elephant chewing away quite happily. After ten minutes or so I start to move forward and then turn left. Our attention is drawn to an elephant walking fairly rapidly on our left hand side and keeping pace with the car, it’s a very large bull elephant and for some reason he looks annoyed. Suddenly he veers into the road and bears down on the car, I accelerate only to find that he’s chasing us down the road, the car erupts into fits of laughter and we slow so that the lads can get some great pictures, which afterwards look pretty good. An enjoyable afternoon ends with the sun setting across some great landscape and we make our way back to Crislin Lodge.


Crislin Lodge is a working lemon farm that is owned by two very nice people called, appropriately, Lyn and Chris. The accommodation are some recently constructed mud huts in the grounds of the farm, each one has the facilities that you need and with ensuite facilities they prove to be very comfortable. I’m sure that in summer this could be a great place to stop, enjoying the swimming pools and the rest areas that are provided, unfortunately it’s too cold for us to enjoy these. The evening meal is a Braai, a South African barbecue set in an open dining room and we all gather around the TV to watch the game between Nigeria and Korea. We sample more beers and a further selection of South African wine before we retire and look forward to a big day tomorrow.