Addo Elephant NP & driving the Garden Route

Following our time in Durban we headed to the city of Port Elizabeth (PE).

Originally we had planned to stay for the night in PE but had been told about Addo Elephant Park by our friends in Durban. Given it was only an hour or so away we decided to skip PE and head straight there.

We arrived quite late in the afternoon and by the time we reached the town of Addo it was starting to get dark so we didn’t see the beautiful mountains as we drove to our accommodation… but were wowed the following morning.

We stayed at Zuurberg Mountain Village, about 15 minutes from the National Park, in the Zurrberg Mountains. We paid the equivalent of AUD150 per night, which included breakfast, and and we loved it so much we ended up staying a second night.

It felt so remote and the rooms so cosy, the mountains so pretty, that it was difficult to leave. A great place to relax that’s for sure!

It even had a lounge area with a fire to relax for a quiet drink :-)

While we loved our accommodation and the mountains, the park itself was a little underwhelming. First thing first, you don’t need to do a guided tour here. We did do a guided tour in the morning before heading back in our own car in the evening; the roads are very accessible and the wildlife is pretty tame.

Also, despite being called an elephant park, we didn’t see that many elephant. I mean, we did see maybe 40-50 throughout the day, but nothing like we had expected; apparently the park currently has around 650 elephants, which they are trying to increase.

But we did see some wildlife, game, zebras, elephants, sooo many warthogs, and we only just missed out on the lions; all in all it was just nice to be on safari again.

After our second night in Zuurberg Mountain Village it was time to get moving. We were now down to one night along the coast before needing to be in Stellenbosch.

As with nearly all of our trips we had limited time and planned to cover way too much ground… probably not helped by our decision to stay a second night near Addo.

Anyway, we headed off leaving the lovely sunny mountains behind to arrive a few hours later on the coast at Jeffery’s Bay (or J Bay) to the worst weather ever! Think down pour, wind and freezing. We had lunch there but I couldn’t get nice pictures of the town, so we headed pretty quick in search of our next destination.

Fortunately the weather did clear as we drove on and we made a few nice stops, one at Kaaimans River Pass, so pretty!

We continued on, deciding on Mossel Bay as the stop for the evening.

Again, it was pretty dreary and cold when we arrived, which was a shame given the beach view we had at our hotel. But we managed a quick walk on the beach the following morning when there was a bit more sun.

From Mossel Bay we had decided that we wanted to make a bit of a detour on our way to Stellenbosch, down south to L’Agulhas, the southern most point of Africa.

Again we had beautiful mountains and views on our drive, briefly stopping at Swellendam to take them in and wishing we had more time to explore the town.

We were not disappointed however when we finally arrived at L’Agulhas. The sun came out (yay!!) and the coastline was breathtaking.

L’Agulhas, the southernmost tip of the African mainland, is also where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. Pretty cool, huh?!!

We spent a bit of time here just taking it all in.

South African National Parks has also recently built a monument (pictured below), reflecting the map of Africa and its landscape. The map is 18 metres from north to south and had people walking around and around it trying to work out where places were (including us).

We had a quick lunch before continuing on our way to Stellenbosch with another quick stop on the way.

This stop was at Beaumont Wines a family run winery which was another recommendation from our friends. It did not disappoint. We brought a couple of bottles from their incredible Chenin Blanc range and would have brought a whole lot more if shipping (and tax) wasn’t so difficult back to Australia.

We also fell in love with the resident dogs: my favourite pictured above.

Life must be pretty good when you can fall asleep on a table at a winery :-).