Port Elizabeth, South Africa
The ship has sailed around the Cape and up the east coast of South Africa to Port Elizabeth which is situated almost on the same latitude as Cape Town. The ship was to originally take 36 hours to arrive here, obviously as a slower rate of knots than we have now traveled, but we have reached this port at the arranged time.
All the ship’s tour listings in South Africa refer to the remoteness of location and operational surprises and to leave valuables on board. Our guide, as all the other guides have stressed the importance of safety awareness.
Port Elizabeth is one of the easiest points to access many game reserves, so it is no wonder we have visited two today. The first, Kragga Kamma Game Park is a private park which allows private vehicles access to the park but with the understanding no one is allowed to exit on any occasion. It is interesting to see the animals are so used to seeing the vehicles driving around that they totally ignore them and allow us to drive up close to them. It is here we added to our list of exotic animals; Cheetah, mongoose, bushbuck, waterbuck, bush pig and warthogs.
Rhino
Warthog family
Bushbuck
Family of elephants
The 3 lionesses here were rescued from a farm in the Ukraine where they had been dumped by a circus, no longer wanted. They were living in a filthy 35m2 concrete and steel cage with no direct sunlight or fresh air. They are now living in a natural an environment as possible with space to roam.
Our next reserve is the government operated Addo Elephant National Park. It is the third-largest national park in South Africa, a vast, bio diverse conservation area with incredible landscapes and high (maybe 2 half metre) vegetation which makes elephant spotting very hard. Apparently up to the 1920’s the area had been an elephant hunting ground where hunters trekked and killed these huge animals for pleasure. Only 8 female and 3 male elephants remained when the ‘hunters’ turned to ‘conservationists’ and partitioned the government to convert the land to a National Park to protect these beautiful creatures. The elephants here do not have tusks but a breeding program where elephants from Kruger National Park have been introduced and some of the young have tusks. Out of 11 original elephants, there are now over 700 or more.
Siblings playing with each other while Mum or Auntie watch.
Com'on I want to play!
This elephant walked up this close to our van to eat. She wasn't even concerned being this close.
We again traveled around the park in our van getting very close to the animals. It was such a wonderful experience to see families of elephants with their young babies playing with their siblings or suckling from their mums'. It is here we saw many zebras, elands, warthogs, a various bucks.
Warthog. Note the warts over each eye.
Zebras like to stay on the road to avoid the annoying flies which plague them mostly when standing in the grasses. Their tails and bodies are continually twitching.
Lunch time with Dan and Sue, Merrilyn and Roger and Rosilyn with our guide.
This elephant may have been one of the introduced from Kruger N.P. The original elephants do not have tusks however the introduced elephants do,
On our return drive back to the ship, our guide explained 4 automotive factories have set up here I Port Elizabeth, 2 are Chinese owned. This port is a very large ‘Row Row’ port shipping vehicles out of South Africa. There are also many side industries here supporting the vehicle manufactures. I am amazed there is a lot of infrastructure, industries and manufacturing here in South Africa but the unemployment rate is over 30% and a lot of homeless people begging in the streets. Our guide explained a lot of people from the northern areas of Africa are illegally here and are competing with the locals for work. There is a lot of corruption here as well. South Africa also prefers to employ young female workers over male (either older or young), so the dynamic of the workforce has changed over the decades.
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