Before continuing down the coast we decided to visit one of South Africa’s largest national parks, which conveniently was only 70km away. The Addo National Park protects the large elephants herds that used to roam the Eastern Cape many years ago. The park now holds over 700 elephants along with your other usual suspects- lions, zebras, buffalo, warthog, etc.

By this point Josh and I had already done a few Safaris accompanied by either professional guides or friends/hunters who knew how to identify animals. Basically we had been learning from S.A.’s finest and for Josh at least some of these skills had rubbed off on him. I, on the other hand, still had a lot to prove after I spent the whole of our last safari taking photos of (and getting very excited about) what I thought were families of meerkats and later discovered to be squirrels. Wild South African tree squirrels that stand upright, not your usual Holland Park variety, but squirrels all the same.

At the entrance to the park we got given a map and instructions, which included an animal watching game where you would win points for being the first to spot an animal. I was quietly (and somewhat blindly) confident.

We were released into the park with the warning of not driving over elephant dung (which is used for food and reproduction by the local endangered dung beetle) and always giving dung beetles right of way. Josh as the proper English gentleman that he is took this very seriously and while some of the locals sped their way through the park in their 4x4s taking out all insects in their path, we made sure to stop for even the smallest of beetles/centipedes crossing our path.

The game was on and it was clear after 15 minutes my chances of winning were slim. Somehow I managed to either always be looking the wrong way, or would miss the animals even when I wasn’t. Josh meanwhile was spotting buffalos, warthogs and kudus left, right and centre. The kudus were especially impressive as they were expertly camouflaged amongst the greenery- but nothing could hide itself from the expert prowl of young Joshua Attenborough

But an hour in we were already starting to worry. Surely at least one of the 700 elephants in the park would cross our path. And then, as we turned the corner, we saw it- a big beautiful elephant chilling out by the waterhole with its mates- a buffalo and a family of warthogs- babies and all! And then all of a sudden there were elephants everywhere- all walking around and munching away at the tasty bushes. Watching elephants eat is really funny- they tug the branches with their trunks and shovel them into their mouths. It’s not the most effective of processes as every time they open their mouths to shove in some new branches a bunch of the old branches falls out- but hey we’re not here to judge, and I’ve seen humans do worse.

After that we saw plenty more animals but the best thing we saw was the mating ritual of two ostriches. We came across the female ostrich which was strutting sexily down the path in front of us. Then we spotted in the distance a big black ostrich throwing himself head first down the mountain towards her. Clearly it was desperate times in Addo Park because I’ve never seen anything run downhill so fast. Think Cooper’s Hill cheese rolling but with a horny ostrich- this was a man on a mission. He slowed down as he approached, and she started to act all coy and run away but he was having none of it. This young male ostrich had clearly been nibbling on some Bangalala and she wasn’t getting away. She put up a respectable fight though- she ended up running all the way back up the hill (although I’m not sure whether this was her playing hard to get or just being embarrassed about going at it right in front of us). In the end when he finally mounted it lasted all of three seconds, which even left us wondering “is that it?!” And to add insult to injury he then immediately turned around and sprinted off downhill. I’ll save you from my feminine critique and let you draw your own conclusions.

And while Josh beat me hands down on the animal spotting, my proudest moment was spotting a dung beetle in action- rolling a perfectly shaped ball of dung twice its size. Having watched multiple Attenborough clips of this as a child, seeing it in really life probably got me more excited than some of the elephants. As they say, it’s the little things 🙂

We made the big mistake of not having had breakfast before entering the park and so after a few hours our game of “spot the animal” had turned into “spot the animal you have eaten” (Warthog and Ostrich came up on top) and this swiftly descended into “spot the animal you would like to eat”, and once we started seeing pork chops instead of animals (Disney style) we realised it was time to get to the restaurant quick sharp. All in all a great day, with some amazing animal spotting by Josh and amazing dung-beetle-dung-rolling spotting by me (although I still maintain I saw that mongoose first).