Viel gesehen, viel erlebt - My previous weekend trips

If you live in a country for five months, you should have enough time to see a lot. However, my list of places I want to visit and events I want to attend is also quite long. Therefore, from the first week on, I try to do as much as possible. Weekends are particularly suitable for this. That's why I will report in the upcoming posts about the trips I have taken with other international students in the past four weeks!

Going on safari is probably the event that everyone should definitely do in South Africa. And even the visit to the Kragga-Kama Game Park during Orientation Week was not enough for us. On the contrary. The desire was awakened to go on another trip, explore a reserve in our own car, and "hunt" for wild animals that can only be seen in the zoo at home. Therefore, on July 21, three other students from Germany and I sat in our rental car at 1 p.m. on our way to the Addo Elephant National Park, the third largest park in South Africa. Our plan was to take advantage of the evening hours on Saturday to see the animals in the sunset. Then we stayed at the Orange Elephant, a backpacker, which was only about 15 minutes away from the park, to be one of the first visitors in the park the next morning and to watch the animals undisturbed as they took their first steps of the day.

So far, the plan sounds good, right?

Nevertheless, my travel group probably recorded this trip as the "trip to gain experience". First, we had to familiarize ourselves with the South African regulations for renting a car. After we paid the entrance fee for the Addo, we were told that each of us could have saved a good 13 euros if we had shown our student visa. With this, we are officially citizens of South Africa and therefore do not have to pay tourist prices for admission or anything else. Therefore, you should always have your passport with you, or at least be able to show a picture, in order to benefit from this! Fortunately, we were able to apply this knowledge directly on Sunday. However, on this morning, we once again witnessed the South African serenity that we have often experienced during our time here.

Despite all these "obstacles", we had two really exciting and great safari days. On the first day, we saw many elephants, some of which were even looking for food in the bushes on the side of the road and were very close to us. We were also able to see many kudus, antelope-like animals, and their impressive horns.

As in Kragga-Kama, we encountered ostriches again. And I may be wrong, but they always seem to have a slightly aggressive expression on their faces.

At least we kept a respectful distance from them. After this first tour, we had dinner in the park's own restaurant and there I also tried the typical South African Malva Pudding. One should not be fooled by the name, as it has less resemblance to the pudding we know, but rather to a very juicy cake. It tasted very good and I will definitely order it several times during my time here! Then we went to the bar of our backpacker, but we only stayed there for one Savanna cider and then went to bed, knowing that the night would be short enough.

We did not know how cold it would be.

As my further experiences could confirm, most hostels here are simple round mud or stone huts, like those still built by the Xhosa people. They keep the wind off, but are still very cold. So that night I crawled under my blanket with two pairs of pants and four sweaters and hoped that my feet would warm up quickly.

The next safari day exceeded the previous one by a multiple! And that, even though we did not see any animals at first! But then we were rewarded when we spotted two spotted hyenas at a waterhole. Unfortunately, they were far away, but you could clearly see what large animals they are! I didn't expect that. After a while, during which we did not see any animals, we were surprised by an elephant.

Right in front of us.

On the road.

And this elephant calmly walked towards us, so we speculated whether elephants would tread on cars for no reason. However, he only passed our car, but he was so close that his tusk almost grazed our rearview mirror and we could have touched him if we had reached out of the window. From this "encounter" on, we could hardly escape animal sightings. I especially enjoyed the moments when we were alone in our car on a large area and kudus, zebras, herons, and ostriches grazed on both sides of our car.

My personal favorites on this day, and probably forever, were the warthogs.

As soon as I spotted one, I couldn't help but exclaim "Pumba" every time! They are just such fascinating animals and the longer you watch them, the more details of their appearance and behavior you notice! Also on one of these areas, we saw two buffaloes, representatives of the Big 5, and their mighty stature.

However, the most breathtaking moment was our encounter with a large herd of elephants. They seemed to come out of nowhere and were on their way to a waterhole.

The whole herd consisted of at least 16 animals and there were also small children with them! And as you have often seen on TV, they even held on to the tails of their predecessors to keep up! Since they followed their own pathways along the road, we were able to follow them without disturbing them. When they finally reached the waterhole, we watched their activities for a while. In addition to the usual refreshing, we could also clearly see how they played with each other and with the water, and also, what hierarchies prevailed in the herd. The interaction with the other animals was also interesting. A herd of zebras joined us, who also watched the elephants and waited until they could approach the waterhole undisturbed. I could have watched the whole spectacle of nature all day, but at some point we had to leave because we had to leave the park on time.

For me, our trip to Addo was definitely an incredible time and an experience that I will remember for a long time. And after the first sighting of an elephant, it was clear to me that I will definitely come back again!

That's it from our first major trip.

Greetings from the land of pachyderms,

Your Caro