OUR pursuit of our parkrun tourist quest continued last week with a quick day trip to Botha’s Hill to do the Valley of a Thousand Hills event.
Of all the parkruns we have done this was probably the toughest, with relentless uphills and some fairly steep gradients. That said it wasn’t as bad as I had expected and it was very scenic.
Bill managed to run most of the way but I took my time and walked it – and enjoyed it too. This brings out parkrun tourist tally to 15 for Bill and 14 for me.
We are getting closer to our 2017 target of completing parkruns at 20 different South African venues and we are having great fun meeting lots of friendly parkrunners on our way to reaching it.
We are spoilt for choice. There are 100 parkrun venues in South Africa. That means that these popular 5km, free, timed runs are held in 100 towns in South Africa – and in towns in many other countries – every Saturday morning at 8am or 7am. Quite an impressive global movement, don’t you think?
But while we wait to do some more parkrun tourist travels with a tent, let’s continue with our virtual tent travels around South Africa, discovering what makes each of our 19 national parks special in its own way.
It is the elephants that make Addo Elephant National Park special; the charming Eastern Cape elephants and their story of how their park saved them from being completely annihilated.
Their sad saga began during the early years of the last century when agriculture expanded into their territory and they started to come into conflict with the farmers. Even by then the herds had been decimated, thanks to the intensive hunting of the elephants for their ivory.
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The few that remained to annoy the farmers were mercilessly hunted, particularly after Major PJ Pretorius was commissioned to get rid of the survivors.
Between 1919 and 1920 more than 100 elephants were relentlessly hunted down and shot, then public opinion turned in the elephants’ favour and two forest reserves were set aside for them in 1925.
Eventually, in 1931, Addo elephant was proclaimed to provide shelter for the 11 remaining Eastern Cape elephants. Even then, their future was not assured.
They kept breaking out and coming into conflict with the farmers again. It was only after park manager Graham Armstrong developed the park’s famous elephant-proof Armstrong fence that the elephant stayed home and began to prosper.
So sturdy was this metal rail and cable contraption that only one elephant ever managed to break free and that was the legendary Hapoor, leader of the Addo herd for more than two decades.
His name came from the hap or nick in his ear, probably caused by a bullet and if this was the case, Hapoor never forgave mankind. His grudge against humans would eventually be his undoing.
After he was deposed by Lanky, at the age of 44, he managed to clamber over the fence. Sadly, because of the aggressive attitude to humans, he had to be shot.
I think Hapoor’s spirit still wanders the thickets and plains of Addo and contributes to the unique atmosphere that I’ve always been aware of since my first visit there many years ago.
Back then Addo was much smaller than it is today and its rest camp, while comfortable, was old-fashioned, no-frills and slightly tatty as rest camps tended to be back then.
It has been so satisfying to watch the park’s amazing growth and the dramatic upgrading of its visitor amenities.
In recent years Addo has grown from just 2 270ha to an impressive 148 000ha in extent. Embracing an amazing five of South Africa’s seven biomes, it provides habitat not only for elephants but for countless other creatures, great and small.
Now it stretches from mountains to sea and is home not only to the Big Five, but what Addo management calls the Big Seven.
As well as spotting the elephants, lions, buffalo, leopard and rhino, visitors might well see great white sharks and southern right whales.
The smaller denizens, including an impressive avian tally, provide plenty of interest too. In fact, the endemic flightless dung beetle is quite a celebrity in the park.
The wonderfully varied fauna and flora make Addo a very interesting slab of wilderness to explore. It is also a very visitor-friendly and attractive park.
It’s main camp is now an absolute delight, with excellent facilities for campers and caravanners, a choice of classy, comfortable self-catering accommodation, beautiful gardens, a good restaurant and well stocked shop, an attractive day visitors’ area, a floodlit waterhole, an underground hide and a bird hide.
When we were last there an interesting information centre was just about complete.
The main game viewing section of the park offers an extensive network of good roads, pleasant picnic sites and plenty of viewing points.
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Although this section of the park attracts the highest concentration of visitors, the newer sections are opening up fast.
The attractive Colchester section now offers some excellent game viewing along roads through wonderfully scenic areas, some of them offering views of distant dunes and the sea.
There is a secluded tented camp in the more remote Zuurberg area, the rustic Mvubu campsite in the mountainous Kabouga area, some challenging but very scenic 4X4 routes and four privately-owned luxury lodges in concession areas, giving the park an upmarket twist.
Being close to some of South Africa’s major tourist routes, it is easily accessible too, so we have often been able to include a stay in the park on our travels around South Africa.
We have always enjoyed our wonderful visits to what has become one of South Africa’s premier parks. The elephants are still the park’s biggest stars.
The Addo herds are incredibly good natured and are well used to vehicles. They never object to the crowds of humans who come to watch them at their waterholes.
It would be most unusual not to enjoy a good few quality elephant sighting even on a short visit to the park.
Not surprisingly, many of my memories of Addo are of wonderful encounters with these peaceful pachyderms, but these big charismatic creatures are certainly not the only reason why we keep on coming back to Addo whenever we can.
The elephants are part of the very unique experience that is a visit to this wonderfully diverse, ever expanding piece of Eastern Cape wilderness.
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