Sunrise Safari at Addo Elephant National Park

This week we took a road trip to the amazing Addo Elephant National Park and went on a sunrise safari. Addo Elephant National Park is located on the Eastern Cape of South Africa and is about 4 hours northeast of Kynsna. The park is massive at roughly 695 square miles and is home to the Big 5 – lions, elephants, black rhino, cape buffalo, and leopards. It is known as one of Africa’s most remarkable wildlife destinations, and has a population of over 700 elephants. It was stunning!

Gap Year Road Trip

Our family loves a road trip, so we all enjoyed the drive. We were able to see a lot of this country as we drove along the coast towards Addo. Dave is getting remarkably good at driving on the left side of the road! We stopped a little over halfway to do some hiking and eat a picnic lunch.

When we arrived in the town of Addo we checked into our Airbnb. It was a very nice place located on a citrus farm. We put our stuff away and then made the short 15 minute drive to the national park.

Our First Glimpse of Africa’s Amazing Animals

The national parks in South Africa not only offer guided safaris but you can also do a self-driving tour through the park. We took full advantage of this while we were there. We did a self-driving tour for the remainder of the afternoon and saw so many things! Seeing these animals in the wild for the first time was truly remarkable.

We made our way back to town just before dark and got dinner before heading back to our Airbnb. We had an early night, as we had to get up at 4am for our guided sunrise safari the next day.

Sunrise Safari

After all the animals we saw during our self-driving tour, we were very excited for our guided sunrise drive. We didn’t see as many animals during our guided tour, but it was still so much fun! Watching the sun come up across the vast landscape was stunning, and our guide shared a lot of interesting information about the animals.

Afterwards, we did another self-driving tour of our own before heading back to Knysna. I drove for the first time during our second self-driving tour and it will likely be my last time driving here. Driving on the left side of the road wasn’t that difficult, the hard part was being on the right hand side of the car. I had a really hard time judging the distance from the road on the left side of the car. I couldn’t imagine navigating all that in traffic.

One of the highlights during our guided tour was seeing a baby elephant among a herd of females. So cute! We didn’t see all of the Big 5, but we did see a black rhino in the distance and so many elephants! The animals we saw included: zebras, elephants, black rhino, meerkats, wart hogs, kudu, red hartebeest, yellow mongoose, black-backed jackal, vervet monkeys, eland, dung beetles rolling balls of poop, and various different birds. I compiled a slideshow of our self-driving tours and the sunrise safari. We took so many pictures!

Wild, Wonderful and Wildly Grateful

The kids said they had pictured a different landscape when they thought of a safari. They envisioned a more flat, rugged, dirt covered terrain. There are places that offer that type of safari experience in South Africa, such as Kruger National Park. That park is about an 18 hours drive from us though. We love a road trip, but not that much. We are all feeling so grateful we got to have an experience like this. Dave said a phrase he will likely never say again in his life; “Hold on, we need to wait for the zebras to cross the road.” So many memories!