A winter day exploring Addo Elephant National Park yielded fantastic views of elephants, zebras, lions and other classic South African wildlife, as well as a host of native birds, such as ostriches, guineafowl and an elegant southern pale chanting goshawk.

 

At 6:15 a.m. on Sunday, June 28, tufts of grey cloud that looked like carded wool floated in the pink-tinged sky over Grahamstown. A few stars gleamed overhead. The calm air was cool and quiet. It was too early for Hadeda ibises to screech their raucous dawn calls.

Vilis and I loaded packs and food into a rented car and headed southwest on the N2, intending to spend the day exploring Addo Elephant National Park, about an hour’s drive away. Ahead of us, scattered trees on the summits of big hills were silhouetted against the brightening sky. Behind us, the orange-and-purple sunrise bathed our rear-view mirrors.

We drove past fenced game reserves on vast, sweeping slopes covered by grass and shrubs. In the twilight, I spotted a wildebeest grazing amid tawny grasses and a pied crow in flight. At 7:30 a.m., the sun rose above eastern hills – a red ball that bathed dairy and beef cattle in the valley bottom with its rose-tinted light.

A few kilometres past Colchester, we entered the southern section of Addo Elephant National Park at Matyholweni Entrance and slowly drove north in the park. Dense, thorny shrubs at the roadsides created tangled barriers punched through with game trails. We spotted spiralling horns and shaggy throat manes backlit by the sun and realized they belonged to two kudu bulls that disappeared into the thick bush before we got a good look at them.

Signs cautioned visitors to remain in vehicles and not hang out windows or climb onto vehicle roofs to look at wildlife – the reason being that you might get attacked by a dangerous animal. At designated lookouts, visitors are allowed to exit their vehicles at their own risk. (Tap on photos to enlarge.)

At Ndlovu Lookout, we cautiously climbed out of the car and had a look around. Another visitor pointed out a heavily built African buffalo foraging in the valley far below the lookout. The buffalo’s outward-and-upward-curving horns were massive, indicating that it was a bull. Thrilled at our first sighting of a buffalo, one of Africa’s “Big Five” mammals (the others being the elephant, rhino, leopard and lion), we piled back into the car.

As we continued northward through the park, taking a side trip on Vukani Loop, the roadsides were alive with birds and mammals. Warthogs grazed in small groups. A flock of helmeted guineafowl scurried along beside a pair of ostriches. Plains zebras, red hartebeests and kudu cows and bulls grazed in open grassland of the sort I had always associated with Africa. A black-backed jackal trotted through long grass, pausing to pounce before glancing back over its shoulder at us. Elephants strode across the landscape, towering over other wildlife.

 

At one point, we were surrounded by zebras and could hear them ripping off grass and chewing it. In another spot, the same happened with warthogs. At Gwarrie Pan, we listened to an elephant slurping up water with its trunk.

After a quick lunch at Main Camp, we visited the lookout over Domkrag Dam, where a local couple who visits the park often told us that lions had been sighted. They pointed out two pale beige, motionless shapes in the distance. We watched in wonder as an elephant strode right past the lions. The big cats lifted their heads, giving us a glimpse of shaggy manes. We hurriedly drove to the nearest viewing spot. After a while, one of the lions rose from his resting place in the shade of a thorny shrub, walked around the shrub and flopped onto the ground in the sunshine. The second lion soon did the same.

After seeing the lions, everything else was icing: vervet monkeys, yellow mongoose, eland, two buffalo bulls having a little standoff and an amazing array of birds, including an iridescent Cape glossy starling and an elegant southern pale chanting goshawk. I would have stopped to identify more birds, but Vilis’s priority was mammals. Rightly so in this park, with its amazing bounty of wildlife.

Before dusk, after a full day of exploring Addo Elephant National Park, we checked into a rondavel at Main Camp. Vilis cooked up stirfries, and we ate our supper on a deck overlooking a floodlit waterhole while stars filled the African night.

Today’s mammal sightings: wildebeest, *kudu, *African buffalo, *common warthog, *plains zebra, *red hartebeest, *African elephant, *black-backed jackal, *vervet monkey, *eland, *African lion, *yellow mongoose.

Today’s bird sightings: pied crow, *southern boubou, fork-tailed drongo, *common ostrich, *helmeted Guineafowl, *crowned lapwing, *African stone-chat, Cape turtle-dove, bokmakierie, *Cape glossy starling, *Egyptian goose,*little grebe, speckled mousebird, common fiscal, *blacksmith lapwing, *Cape teal, *black-winged stilt, Cape crow, *southern pale chanting goshawk, *red-knobbed coot, *common moorhen, cape weaver, *Karoo scrub-robin, *South African shelduck, *black crake.