ADDO ELEPHANT NATIONAL PARK: SOUTH AFRICA
Published in Travel Africa EditionTwenty Six: Winter 2003/4

Contact Alexa for your very own experience!

GREATER ADDO ELEPHANT NATIONAL PARK: SOUTH AFRICA - By Philip Briggs

Nervous, me? Scared rigid, more like! The gigantic bull elephant that was grazing 10m away when I cut the engine is now striding towards us with a palpable air of intent.And it keeps coming closer, only to stop practically alongside the driver's seat, stare at the car, and emit a subterranean rumble of - well, annoyance, curiosity or greeting, who knows? The tusks, which I could reach out and touch if I so chose, are not the largest I've seen. But they are more than sufficient in size, I calculate, to leave me little room for manoeuvre should they suddenly travel at speed through the open window.

It's a great photo opportunity, I suppose. But, from the corner of my eye, I see that my photographer wife Ariadne, seated behind me, is also gawking dumbstruck out of the window, her lens drooped impotently in the direction of the door handle. Meanwhile, the bull stares back at us, emitting a second pachydermal rumble that amplifies the tension inside the vehicle. Then, abruptly, it undertakes a graceful 90-degree turn, wanders around the car to the passenger side, and starts munching contentedly on the foliage that it was presumably heading for in the first place. Ariadne and I look at each other, whisper a couple of awed expletives, and resume the momentarily forgotten art of breathing.

Close elephantine encounters of the benign kind are an everyday occurrence in Addo Elephant National Park. True, the reserve doesn't harbour the sheer number of elephants that roam the likes of Hwange or Tsavo further north, nor is it the place to go looking for outsized tuskers. But it does host what is probably the densest population on the continent, and, I venture, the most relaxed in the presence of vehicles - which means firstly that sightings are plentiful, and secondly that there's no better place to observe elephantine antics at trunk-length proximity.

But Addo isn't just about elephants. Over the course of a week we encountered 15 other mammal species, including black rhino and buffalo, plenty of statuesque male kudus and parties of stiff-tailed warthogs, as well as small predators such as black-backed jackal and yellow mongoose - not to mention the genet that darted through our braai area one evening! Birdwatching can be rewarding too. Addo is renowned for the delightfully vocal and colourful bokmakierie, while other common Southern African endemics include southern tchagra, southern boubou, Cape weaver, Cape bulbul and the impressive jackal buzzard.

Until the mid-1990s, Addo - like the nearby Mountain Zebra and Bontebok National Parks - existed primarily to preserve a single endangered species. That changed in 1997, however, with the formal acceptance of a visionary proposal to create a Greater Addo Elephant National Park (GAENP) linking the arid Karoo north of Addo to the Indian Ocean coastline between Ports Elizabeth and Alfred.

The rate of progress in realising this vision has been astonishing. In only six years, the National Park has been extended to cover a continuous 12,500km2 stretching south-east from Darlington Dam, through the Zuurberg Mountains, to the 46km of coastline protected within the former Woody Cape Forest Reserve. Future acquisitions of thinly-populated Karoo ranchland, together with the proclamation of an offshore marine zone south of Woody Cape, should eventually bring the park's total area to roughly 50,000km2 - a quarter the size of the Kruger National Park.

The ecological variety within GAENP quite possibly exceeds that of any other African national park. Five of South Africa's seven terrestrial biomes are represented, with habitats ranging from montane forest to coastal fynbos; from 100m-high dunes to the dry euphorbia-studded Karoo plains, as well as the tangled semi-succulent spekboom (bacon tree) scrub of Addo itself. And while elephants are clearly the main tourist draw, the marine sector offers fine whale-watching, while offshore islands host a breeding colony of 100,000 Cape gannets, along with significant numbers of African penguin and Cape fur seal.

The expansion of Addo's boundaries also solves a population problem that would have been inconceivable 50 years ago.

The elephant density within the Armstrong Fence now stands at almost three per square kilometre, and past trends suggest that without intervention this figure might easily be doubled within the next 15 years. To alleviate the land pressure, 69 elephants were relocated to the newly-fenced Nyathi Sector in May 2003, and a similar number will be moved to the more southerly Olifantsplaat Sector in 2004 - bringing the elephants' range to within one tantalising kilometre of the beach.

Another significant development is the recent relocation of eight bull tuskers from the Kruger National Park to broaden a gene pool bottlenecked through a mere six sexually active individuals in the 1930s. Addo will also soon rank as a Big Five reserve, with the planned introduction of two prides of Kalahari lions in late 2003, followed by a dozen spotted hyena. And although the introduction of lion might be perceived as a sop to tourism, the reality is that Addo - as evidenced by the striking number of hobbling antelope - has long been ecologically compromised by the absence of any large predator other than leopard.

From the visitor's perspective, GAENP remains something of a work in progress. The offshore islands are currently inaccessible to tourists, while the former Zuurberg National Park and Woody Cape Nature Reserve can only realistically be explored on hiking trails. But when plans to develop tourist access beyond the Armstrong Fence do finally come to fruition, GAENP will not only be one of the continent's prime elephant viewing spots, but also perhaps the most diversely rewarding conservation area anywhere in Southern Africa.

PJ Pretorius and the Dirty Dozen

Addo is one of Africa's great elephant-watching destinations. But it hasn't always been so. Up until the late 1960s Addo's elephants - led by a legendary misanthropic bull nicknamed Hapoor (literally, Bitten Ear, in reference to a nick made years earlier by a misdirected bullet) - were notoriously elusive and aggressive. And little wonder, when one considers that this densely-bushed part of the Eastern Cape was subjected to persecution by ivory hunters throughout the 19th century.

By 1900 the once vast elephant herds were reduced to no more than 150 animals, isolated by hundreds of kilometres from their nearest kin, and confined to the densest, driest bush except when they undertook nocturnal forays into the surrounding farmland to find water.

Worse was to come. In 1918 the Uitenhage Town Council responded to complaints by local citrus farmers, whose crops were being raided by elephants looking for a juicy supplement to their leafy diet, by inviting the renowned hunter Major PJ 'Jungle Man' Pretorius to eradicate the vermin once and for all. Exactly how many elephants Pretorius killed goes unrecorded - the most conservative estimate is 120 - but by the end of his bloody campaign, a mere 12 individuals survived.

Oddly, it was Jungle Man himself - or so legend has it - who led the petition for the few elephants that had survived the massacre to be accorded official protection. Finally, in 1931, the 150km2 tract of bush that forms the core of the present-day National Park was gazetted, and the so-called 'dirty dozen' were rounded up into their arbitrarily delineated new home - with one bull being shot in the process. The elephant population still stood at fewer than 20 skittish and ill-tempered individuals in 1954, when the first truly elephant-proof fence was erected under warden Graham Armstrong, using steel rope from elevators. Since then a consistent annual growth rate of more than five percent has been maintained - by 1968 the population had increased to 50, topping the century mark by 1979, and subsequently rocketing to an estimated 400.

Fact File

Highlights
Peerless close-up views of Africa's densest elephant population.
Hiking through southern Africa's tallest dune fields on the Alexandria Trail.
The so-called 'Big Seven' - not only elephant, but also lion, leopard, black rhino, buffalo, great white shark and southern right whale.

When to go
Year-round.

Getting there
The main entrance gate and camp lie about 70km north of Port Elizabeth along a good tar road through Addo town.

Where to stay
Main Camp consists of 20 campsites (around £6 for two people) as well as a variety of self-catering units ranging from £15-30 for double occupancy. Numerous private B&Bs lie within 15km of the park entrance, while upmarket private concessions, such as Gorah Elephant Camp, offer packages in the £60+ range, inclusive of game drives.
Elsewhere, there's the superbly rustic Narina Camp in the Zuurberg sector and inexpensive chalet accommodation at Darlington Dam.

Things to do
Self-drive game drives during daylight hours - it's worth sitting at a waterhole for a few hours, in particular Hapoor and Gwarrie Dams, waiting for elephants to come to drink. Night drives in an open-sided vehicle from Main Camp. A roughly one-hour walking trail in Main Camp is attractive to birdwatchers. Various day and overnight hiking trails run through the Woody Cape and Zuurberg sectors.

Find out more
The park runs an excellent website (www.addoelephantpark.com). Several publications are available at the camp reception. Lyall Watson's recently published Elephantoms contains plenty of background information about the elephants of Addo and the Knysna Forest.

Contact Alexa for your very own experience!