Tips on Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa

Best way to visit Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa

 

Close encounter

Tip 1: Stay overnight at the parks rest area. They have tent camping options for $20 or fancier bungalow type chalets. This lets you enter the game drive area at 5:30am in the morning as opposed to when they open the main gate at 6am for people staying outside the park. You can also have dinner at the restaurant there until 8:30pm, visit the hide overlooking the waterhole at any time, and listen to hyenas howl or lions roar deep into the night from your campsite. There is also a swimming pool for overnight guests only. This is perfect for the hot middle part of the day in between game drives. 

Lion with his kill

Night Game Drive Success

Tip 2: Go on a night game drive. At $35 it is well worth being able to see the park after dark. This not only gives you a chance to see the nocturnal animals in the park, which there are many, but also gives you access to a park ranger who can give you all kinds of insider tips and knowledge about the animals and the park itself. For example, I learned that most of the lions had been removed in order to save the more valuable buffalo that they were eating. The buffalo here are a healthy line and disease free which makes them very valuable to other game parks across the continent who are having trouble with foot and mouth disease in their buffalo stock. Also there is a discount if you have a WILDcard.

Kudu Fighting: Africa pics for sale

Tip 3: Self Drive in the park. It is much more economical to rent a car, drive to Addo and then follow the well-marked road system through the park as you look for animals. This gives you the flexibility to stop and spend more time at overlooks or for photographs and to just go at your own pace. Spend enough time here and it is amazing how many animals will walk right past your window. We had elephant and buffalo herds walk by, and a huge male lion eating a buffalo just outside the window. (That was a $30,000 meal for that lion!)

Tip 4: Don’t stay in Spekboom Tented Camp unless you are fully prepared to be self-sufficient. A couple of young guys checked in at reception and were staying inside the park at this tented camp but were unaware of the time limitations. It’s a 30 minute drive to the tented camp from the rest area where the shop and restaurant are. You have to be in the camp by 6:30pm, before it gets dark. This means you would have to eat dinner around 5 at the restaurant during prime game drive time and you wouldn’t have access to night drives either. There is also no electricity there. It could be a very cool place to soak up the sounds of the park at night if you are prepared.

Spring time is baby time in Addo

Tip 5: Drive a little more. The more you put yourself out there in the park the higher your chances of seeing something fun. Drive all the way South, don’t just look at the northern section. South is where we found most of the elephant herds, lions, hartebeest, zebra, and big ground birds. There are some big open areas of savanna in the southern part of the park that remind me of the plains of Serengeti.

   Tip 6: Stop at a waterhole and watch for a long time. Have a little car picnic, see who comes and goes from the waterhole. Different elephant interactions can be quite entertaining and enlightening here. We watched as dominant bulls were displaced by nursing mothers who would run off after another male knocks over their baby. We saw tiny baby elephants getting used to their trunks by swinging them around and around. I watched as one elephant would stick its trunk into the mouth of another trying to steal a quick snack. And you can start to see the hidden language that the elephants share and that defines their relationships. 

Addo's famous residents

Getting real close

Tip 7: Stop in at the museum/learning center. Located in the same building as the game drive reception, this is a great place to get a basic history of this area of South Africa, as well as of the park itself. There could have very easily been just farms here like everywhere else in the area, but a few forward thinking conservationalist put in tremendous effort preserving the last 16 of the areas elephants.

Every time I come here to South Africa I have made it a point to stop at Addo National Park. You can check out the blog post from six years ago from Addo here.  If you are driving from Johannesburg to Cape Town it will be right on you way and is a can’t miss. 

village weavers around our camp

Buffalo kicking up dust

Close up of a zebra's stripes

Secretary bird on the hunt