Addo

After the stop at the  cheese farm stall we drove on for many kilometres. We stopped in P.E. to get cash, petrol,airtime (prepaid cellphone time) and food and headed on to our stay for the night: Orange Elephant Backbackers, 8 km away from Addo Elephant National Parks main entrance! We arrived late and were way to late to book a Safari for the next day – what turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to us.

herd of zebras

 Addo is one of the parks where you are allowed in with your own car, so you can actually do your own safari! On the information centre, there is a board, where the rangers mark the areas, where animals were sighted this morning. So we did our own safari. We were up early again, so we were at the park entrance at something past 8 am. We drove trough the park the whole day, leaving at 5:30pm. It was awesome! First we saw only 2 single elephants (must have been bulls) and many many different deer-like animals. We saw many many pigs (like Pumba of the Lion King), even more zebras and gopher-like ones. Driving around checking right and left – and the road, because dungbeatles (Pillendreher-Käfer) have right of way in Addo! (unfortunately we didn’t see one of those) – was a lot of fun, and I turned out to be a pretty decent animal-finder! In the afternoon we found a herd of ellies than. Like a real herd: mothers and children, with two tiny baby elephants!

herd of elephants
mothers and babies

It was unbelievable and I was so afraid! Standing in the middle of a whole herd of these huge beasts with the tiny little car we had! We closed our windows, sat very still and waited till they moved on.

The passed around our car without anything, and the babies were so cute! They actually move like toddlers, and are just adorable! The mums were huge on contrary and scary to me. One thing that surprised me: Elephants have their tits between their front legs, not like cows between the hind legs! They do look pretty humanly with the two boobs like that!

After that we saw some ostriches, some more elephants, some more deers, some more zebras, lots of birds and monkeys! Cute little monkeys playing in the bushes!

in the middle of elephants

It was a wonderful day in Addo and we were sad that we couldn’t stay another day to try to find the 10 rhinos and 9 lions they have in the park there. We didn’t get to see the big 5, but we saw a lot of amazing animals!

Rainforest - or the Big Trees of South Africa

Rainforest

Next stop (it was still pouring rain) was the big trees. We were in San Francisco earlier that year and saw a lot of mammoth trees there, so we were curious about the big trees of South Africa! We hiked for maybe 1,5h there as well and we really felt like in the middle of the rain forest!

The big trees here look much like the ones in California. They are way not so huge, but the structure of the bark is alike. While in California it is Redwoods, in South Africa it is Yellowwoods. They seem to be able to stand fire as well and grow very old and very tall.

We were totally soaked through after that and hungry. We drove on and found a wonderful little farm stall that sold cheese and bread. They had a tiny restaurant and they served hot lentil soup that day. That was the best that could have happened to us: Tee, warm soup and a blanket. We would have bought way more than we did, but unfortunately we ran out of cash in exactly that moment and my credit card had died on my a few days ago.

Storms End

The Nationalpark was actually called Storms River Mouth, but it felt like Storms End for sure!

After the incredible wonderful hike in Robberg the day before, we wanted to go hiking in Tsitsikamma next. Nice plan, didn’t count the weather in: it was grey in the morning, pouring soon afterwards. So no 6 hours hike in Nature Valley for us. We did want to cover some ground to P.E. so we drove on. We stopped in the section of Tsitsikamma National Park, where Storms River ends into the Indian Ocean.

You can cross that river mouth via a sustention bridge. It was raining and very windy. We did a spontaneous hike up to the viewpoint anyway – which was more than 1 km (like the sign said) away for sure! We didn’t bring the backpack and I was swearing about that pretty soon. It definitely was worth the effort climbing in the rain. It was so beautiful there! And very very windy! You couldn’t even stand at the edge of he view point deck.

Bungy

After our beautiful hike in Robberg, we drove on into the east. We did want to reach P.E. (Port Elisabeth) after all. After Knysna Elephant Park we were pretty set on Addo Elephant National Park, where you can actually see ellies in the wild. But we did pass Bloukranks, where you can bungy-jump down the highest bridge in the world! And Sebastian really wanted to do that. So he did! I didn’t! I tried to capture that in pictures, but murphy’s law, the camera with the tele-zoom died the moment he jumped. He got a whole CD with pictures of his jump afterwards, and a certificate saying that he just jumped the highest bridge in the world!

that is where he jumped!

African Array Lodge

sunrise from the deck

Thanks to Coast to Coast we found another adorable Backpackers to stay in for the night after Knysna Elephant Park: African Array Lodge. Just before Plettenberg Bay, which we wanted to visit the next day, you turn right into a dirt road and follow that for a few kilometres, till you reach a gate. Good think I called ahead, we wouldn’t have found it otherwise and the lady there texted me the code for the door!
It was in the middle of nowhere, a water reservoir under the wooden deck. We were very hungry after the walk and the elephants, and good thing so! The people running the lodge/backpackers are cooks! The menue was perfect, we had beef burgers with avocado, which was delicious and pretty much fell into bed right afterwards.

fantastic breakfast

We did want to get up for sunrise, which was supposed to be amazing from the deck – we did and it was!
And breakfast was even more delicious than dinner. It was beautiful, sitting in the middle of nowhere, watching the sun rise, hearing only birds and whatever else made those sound in the nature around us. And we could already see the half-island we wanted to hike in that day. It was just perfect.

Robberg from afar

Robberg

side of the half-island facing the bay

facing the Indian Ocean

stony coast facing the Indian Ocean

Today (Thursday) we hiked again, this time on our own. We stayed in Ladysmith right before Plattenberg Bay in that wonderfully amazing lodge with njami breakfast and started pretty early for us (which we lost, because we took the key, so we had to turn back again). We wanted to hike in Robberg, the little half-island in Plettenberg. It’s a National Park and you have a chance to actually see white sharks there from the land! We didn’t see great whites, but we saw lots of lots of seals, huge crickets and chameleons! But Robberg is more a nature reservoir than something for animals. There are beaches, cliffs, water all around you and you see for miles and miles. It was as everyone told us: beautiful. We did see whales, as well, but that is actually not so spectacular from afar. You pretty much only see water splashing. But you can imagine the huge beasts underneath!

see it?

Snails

Walking in the beach at Wilderness in the morning, before going into Wilderness with Matthew and Janine we discovered the secret of the snails. Sebastian collected shells, and picked up a snail, because of its pretty house – but it was still in there! The little thingis seem to live in the sand, where the waves just reach them. They dig into the sand when it’s getting to dry and as soon as the wave comes and the sand is wetwet again, they start moving around like crazy. It’s fascinating to observe! You can just stand and watch them, while they wait for a wave and start moving as soon as the wave leaves them.