Addo Elephant National Park

a Must for elephant lovers

We fell in love with South Africa when we first visited the country in 2011. Since then we returned almost every year. During the last years, we visited a large number of national parks in South Africa. Addo Elephant NP was on our itinerary almost every time, with ever increasing time spent there: the first visit, we stayed only one night, and on our last visit during Dec2015/Jan2016, we stayed 6 nights. The park's main attraction are the elephants, and you will not be able to miss them due to their huge numbers. There are also lions and rhinos, but they are very rare. There a no giraffes. We can spend hours at the waterhole simply watching the elephants interacting with each other. Their social behaviour is very much like humans. We particularly like watching the little ones, and there were always many of them.
The bird hide next to the restaurant is also worth a visit. Lots of red cardinals and weaver birds.

We always stayed in one of the park's chalets. They offer sufficient comfort and you are close to the animals. Although outside the park there are more luxurious accommodation for almost the same price, we always opt to stay in the park, because there is a major advantage: People in the park are allowed to enter 1 hour earlier and leave one hour later than people staying outside (this is because the gates between street and Addo rest camp close earlier/open later than the gates between rest camp and game area). Add the driving time from your accomodation to the park and you can easily calculate that good light for photography is impossible when you stay outside.
A typical day as we organize it looks as follows:
- get up 30 mins before the game gate opens
- have a coffee and some cookies or light breakfast (kitchen available in the chalet)
- enter the park when gate opens (usually at or shortly after sunrise)
- stay in the park (mainly at the waterholes) until 9 or 10a.m.
- return to the restaurant for breakfast
- during the day, get the sleep you missed (aircon available in chalet)
- around 4p.m. start the afternoon drive (some cookies and coffee before come in handy)
- leave park when gate closes
- have shower and dinner at the restaurant (but self cooking at chalet would also be possible)
- sleep
It is advisable to bring in your own supplies, especially if you want to cook yourselves, because the shop has only minimal choices.

Saw 3 of the Big 5

We went through the tour company Quality Touring Services (http://www.qualitytouringservices.co.za/index.htm). The guides were very knowledgeable and professional. We first drove through the park in a small bus that holds about 30 people. We saw a lot of wildlife right away: warthogs, red hartebeests, an eland, a black-backed jackal, zebras, helmeted guinea fowl, elephants, male and female ostriches (and their eggs!), kudu, leopard tortoise and another small one I can't remember, and black-headed heron.

I highly recommend taking the open air vehicle tour because they can go off the main roads, whereas the personal cars cannot. That's where we got to see two male lions very up close and personal! It was awesome.

The restaurant told us they were only serving breakfast, which was very delicious, however, we saw that the table next to us (also with our party), were able to order lunch. That was a bit disappointing!

Go into the interpretation center to read about Hapoor the elephant. Very interesting story.

Overall, it was really great. Many of the watering holes are on the side of the roads so we were able to see many animals. That's the only part that seemed a bit artificial. Oh and we stayed along the edge of the park for some of the tour so you can see fencing and also electrical towers, etc.

There is a lot of open space which is ideal for elephant spotting. You will see a lot of elephant! Other game is harder to spot. It is also a very busy park.

Very nice scenery, a lot of wildlife

Very nice scenery, a lot of wildlife, good guides, knowledge of the guide, nice people

A great way to spend a day in Africa

We have been fortunate to visit many Safari Park in both South Africa and across South Africa, and our day visit to Addo Elephant Park did not disappoint. Being short of time we could only spare the day for our visit, but it proved to be a great day safari location, easily accessible from Port Elizabeth and Port Alfred. We started our visit early in the morning at the Southern entrance to the park which meant there was far fewer cars on the road than the areas up around the main cam. We were spoilt with magnificient sightings of both Elephant and Buffalo herds. We didn't see any of the big cats, but others in the area did our timing was just a little off.

The bush in many places in Addo is very thick which can make spotting game a bit challenging at times. As we only visited for the day I can not comment on accommodation, however we did visit the restaurant at the main camp and were very impressed by the meal. Everything from arriving, purchasing our day pass and moving around the park worked efficiently and the park appears to be very well run. We will certainly visit again if we are lucky enough to find ourselves in this part of the world again.

We only had about three hours there as part of a tour of the Eastern Cape, so not much time to see many animals. We did see two herds of elephants drinking at the dam which was an amazing sight to see.

Amazing experience

After starting our South Africa trip in Cape Town, Addo Elephant National Park was the first self drive safari we did. It was an awesome experience. We had the possibility to get realy close to giant elephant. But there is a lot more to see. We didn't see any rhino, lion or leopard, but we did see a lot of warthog, zebra's, buffalo, kudu and a lot more. It's a giant park, but it is not busy at all. This gave us the real safari feeling.

More elephants than you can shake a stick at!

This is a very popular park and it shows with the amount of people you will see there. There isn't a place where you will think you are in the middle of nowhere, the roads are mainly paved and you are never very far from another car.
There is a notice board near the main shop that lists the animal sightings for the day so it allows you to plan out your trip, Addo is enormous so make sure you take a whole day to view of all (if not more).
We drove for a while only seeing a couple of animals, then a single male elephant stode into view. We followed him until he turned a corner and we saw a whole herd of the magnificent beasts. This memory will stay with me forever. We found several other herds throughout the day each as amazing as the other.
This is an amazing park and there are plenty of other animals to see (lions, zebras, antelope to name but a few). If you like elephants then you will love this park.

Large elephant herds, predators, giraffes, zebras, warthogs and others. Self driving through the game reserve. Follow the safety rules.

Nice area close to Cape town and the Garden Route, mostly Elephants (never seen any other Big 5 animal there).