Cloudy skies again. Breakfast on terrace – usual fare – I had today’s special of scrambled egg and bacon on a croissant. Delicious.
8.30 start to go to Addo Elephant Park – with the US guests, driven by our guide Sorita who used to work at Addo, so is very knowledgeable and passionate about the Park, its inhabitants and preservation.
Today and tomorrow’s trips are the highlight of our visit – so prepare to sit down if you intend to share this David Attenborough epic with us – I took copious notes and loads of photos and videos!
The zebra we’d seen on the way in were ‘Birchell’s’ zebra –they have an extra stripe in between the black and white and they are the species mainly seen since the smaller Cape Mountain Zebra are very rare.
Although we didn’t see Big Five, it felt a real privilege to see loads of elephants of all ages, some warthogs, a couple of kudu, tortoises, dung beetle at work in their natural environment. Addo is a National Park and there is no intervention in the animals’ life. The only exception (and it doesn’t happen often) is if a warden sees an elephant lying down for more than 20 minutes during the day, they know this elephant has laid down to die and it can take about 6 hours to die, so they shorten the process with a shot.
There are 5 different biomes (major ecological community) in this area –
- Subtropical thicket (Valley bushveld) – which is what we will be travelling through in Addo Elephant Park – mainly spiky vegetation of prickly pears – which they love, and speckboem – the leaves of which humans can eat and it’s good for sore throats. The bushveld is fire resistant so there isn’t a problem with bush fires.
- Mountains (Zuuberg in this area)
- Forests
- Grassland – fynbos
- Karoo – this is exceptionally dry at the moment, but humans still don’t interfere by, for example, putting down Lucerne for the wildlife – it really about survival of the fittest.
The AEP was opened in 1931 and it is being increased in size to become the 3rd largest game reserve after Kruger (near Johannesburg) and Kalahari (in Botswana. At the moment the park is run by different concessions, but the final vision is to incorporate all the concessions into one huge area possibly – this would include the ocean area – the only game park which includes ocean life. They are considering putting a railway underground that runs south of the park, so that a southern area of bushveld can be annexed. However, they always have to take into account the animals’ needs for further feeding grounds which might be in contrast to the tourists’ needs to be able to visit the park and be relatively sure of getting sightings within the huge area in a 2 or 3 hour visit. Only once has Sorita guided a tour that saw just one elephant – this is more likely to happen when it has rained and the elephants have no need to come to the watering holes.
A lot of research and conservation work goes on – they recently brought in 4 bull elephants from Kruger to avoid interbreeding. These bulls were quite aggressive at first – because they are anyway, but also because of the stress of their relocation, but they have now settled down – the natives of Addo have ‘taught them better manners’ as Sorita put it! They have longer legs than Addo elephants because the vegetation at Kruger is much taller. Apparently elephants adapt to their environment remarkably quickly, so in a generation or two, a change in their physiology can be detected.
The researchers are patrolling the park all the time and have radio contact with the tagged animals. But although they could inform guides that there is a pride of lions in a particular area, they may still not be visible from the road, so a tour could waste time searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack! Lions are on the menu for tomorrow’s tour at Schotia.
We saw a Leopard Tortoise (named because of its markings) with rather a damaged shell – probably an elephant had trod on it. Although elephants are very sensitive creatures they do have a blind spot under their trunk. The wardens used to pick up tortoises to show visitors the difference between male and female (male have a concave section on their belly to accommodate the female’s shell when mating) but apparently picking them up made the tortoises urinate and they became dehydrated.
Then we saw Paul, one of the Kruger bulls who is ‘in musth’ so needs to find a female in estrus. He certainly looked like a man on a mission! Later, Sorita pointed out a zig-zag pattern on the road, which was the trail left by Paul – apparently a bull elephant in musth can’t control his bladder (it’s a man thing!)
Saw a Hadeda ibis – they are apparently afraid of heights, so as they see the ground falling away from them after take-off they make an unattractive screeching noise (which you frequently hear as you pass through the countryside.) These Ibis are very different from the Egyptian (sacred) ibis which are much more elegant to watch in flight.
Then we saw a mum warthog with 1 toddler and 2 babies. Not the prettiest, but quite cute in a way how they scurry along with their tails held erect like a Japanese tourguide with umbrella! Mum tends her babies for 6 weeks underground before they emerge – obviously they are prey to quite a few large predators.
Rhinos – they tend to stay in the thicket and certainly don’t come out if the elephants are about.
Elephants are dominant here and lions tend to stay away from them whereas in Botswana a lion will leap onto an elephant from a tree and the rest of the pride will then attack it. Lions can go without food for 14 days but then become dogged (if you can say that about a lion!) in their search, so are a force to be reckoned with.
Elephants can smell water from quite a distance and will dig up borehole pipes. It is this sense of smell that helps to lead them to the water holes. They also sense change in atmospheric pressure and when they feel rain approaching, they change their habitual movements, which as I said before makes it difficult for guides then to find the herds.
Sorita pointed out a hartebeest skeleton (they are suffering with lack of vegetation at the moment, so are weak and vulnerable). The other animals who are osteophagic, will chew on bones – bit like we might chew on chewing gum – to get their calcium intake.
We just caught sight of a female kudu – they’re very skittish and have the hugest trumpet-like ears to ‘tune in’ to what’s happening around. She soon picked us up and hid. We did catch sight of a male with his splendid antlers later. Apparently among deer-like animals living in the bush, only the male has antlers, whereas those living in grasslands, both genders have antlers.
Then Sorita stopped beside a dung heap. Very interesting we thought. I’d noticed she was avoiding them on the road and thought it was just so as not get the tyres dirty. But she was being kind to dung beetles who are busy on new deposits, They work very industriously to make balls which they then take to their underground burrows. They use the softer buffalo dung to make their nests and then use the elephant dung balls to eat as their ‘honeymoon’ feast before the female lays her egg. Yummy!
They hibernate for 3 months of the year and because they constantly have their head in dung are known as ‘best breath-holders in the world’!
Elephants only digest 40% of their food, so dung is full of fibre which makes good paper. However, nothing leaves Addo park, so the dung is left for the dung beetles.
Then we saw an elephant with her 5 day old baby – aah. Baby was suckling and occasionally making loud complaints when mum decided to move out of range. Babies stay very close –touch is very important for both mum and baby – and female elephants are very sensitive to where baby is, so don’t tread on them. However males are less aware. Sorita told the story of when a teenage bull was pestering a new mum and in his excitement was likely to tread on baby. The rest of the herd encircled the baby and then mum (probably rather reluctantly) moved away and allowed the teenager to have his wicked way and satisfy his urge, so she could get back to her baby. They are a very caring species.
The learning stage for young elephants is long – the matriarch is ‘schoolteacher’ and teaches the migration routes etc.
Babies are suckled for 2 to 3 years, but even a 5 year old may still sneak up and take an extra snack if Mum is suckling a younger sibling.
They eat 5% of their body weight each day, which can amount to 200kg a day, so they graze for 18 hours a day to achieve this.
Elephants have a very efficient cooling system. They have huge veins in their ears, so they flap them to cool the blood down as it passes through. They can store water in their stomachs, so if they can’t get to water to cool down, they can draw on that reservoir to spurt water over their ears to keep cool.
They give themselves dry mud dust baths to disolodge parasites and also as sun protection – their skin is more delicate than the tough pachyderm appears.
They live up to around 60 years and a female reaches menopause about 45, having started at about 11. Not so different to humans. Apart from their gestation is 22 weeks – ouch! So they tend to have between 4 and 11 babies in their lifetime with 4 or 5 years gap between each.
It used to quite difficult to tell if an elephant is pregnant or how far gone, but now they can test her dung.
They have very delicate hearing – between 5 and 15 hertz – we hear about 35htz. So a male can hear the estrus call of a female 8K away! Plenty of time to get rid of any headache.!
Finally we stopped at a very well-appointed fenced in picnic area where a Vervet monkey and her baby were waiting. Obviously we weren’t to feed them because then they become aggressive towards future picnickers.
A faster trip home because the rest of the party needed to be back in time for their afternoon trip to Schotia (we’re doing it tomorrow). I didn’t mention the vehicle we went in – an open back jeep that had been adapted with tiered, elevated seating and a canopy so that you have really good views over the tops of the scrub to sight the animals. Driving to the AEP was exhilarating – like being in an open top car, with the warm, fairly blustery wind making Diane giggle furiously as she tried to cling onto her safari hat– I gave up and took mine off.
A lazy afternoon writing this epic then being rather frustrated as I carried the laptop around the complex trying to get a decent internet connection to upload to the blog – without success. John tried the outdoor shower – it was a bit draughty for me – I won’t be uploading
Met more new arrivals – Vivian (BBC worldwide) and Jean Phillippe (or JP as he suggests for ease – CNN), from Quebec/Montreal but have been living in London for last 7 years; and John and Carol from Beverley. England, also S.Africa ‘virgins’ but have travelled extensively. As always, we all swapped experiences and the places to eat, over the aperitifs and nibbles.
Dinner again excellent – pea and mint soup, baked fig wrapped in halloumi and ham (watch out for Dad’s version, Sarah!), berry sorbet, tender beef on a bed of onion marmalade, lyonnaise potatoes and mushrooms in cream sauce, lime cheesecake.
Diana Krall’s ‘The girl in the other room’ was great listening so I shall look that out on return home.
“Tell me a fact and I will learn, tell me the truth and I will believe, tell me a story and you will touch my heart forever!” – author unknown – in the foreword from a journal/book by Nicola Schwim on Addo Elephant Park. Hope you’re enjoying this ‘story’ which is a mixture of all 3.