The Mountains (Eastern Cape) Cont

Whilst Addo is known for its Elephant the bush there is so thick it is actually quite difficult to see them, also we grew up (in an African wildlife sense) on Elephant in Chobe, Botswana, which has one of the highest concentrations of Elephant in Africa, so  we were not  unduly bothered about seeing lots of Elephant here, we get just as much pleasure seeing the smaller animals.

In fact we have seen more wild Tortoises so far in South Africa than we had seen ever and Addo is the home to some monsters. Leopard Tortoises could be seen wandering all over the veldt and frequently we came upon tiny baby ones wandering across the tracks. The problem is some people race round the park and whilst your not supposed to get out your vehicle on two occasions we had to jump out to slow down cars coming towards us and move baby Tortoises off the road before they got squashed.

It was getting on for 5pm and as we hadn't seen any Elephant so far we decided to return the next day when we would have more time, it was time to get back to the Homestead and set up camp! We arrived back at Homestead about 30 mins later and all seemed well, it wasn't raining and we looked forward to a nice evening pleased we had found such a nice spot to camp.

It was only after we had put up the ground tent and it was getting dark that we started to scratch like hell. We soon realised we were being eaten alive by insects which were so small we could not see them in the dark. Now the Homesteads garden is very tropical and lush and what we hadn't noticed was a ditch in the bush close to us which was full of water after the heavy rain, all we knew was the biters weren't mossies but we couldn't catch one in the act to identify it.

All we could do was cover up as best we could and hope before too long they would bugger off. There must have been swarms of them because above us a few Swallows were still flying about trying to catch them in the darkness, but unfortunately they were not enough to make any difference. Going into the loo a bit later I found out the rest of the Swallows were chilling out on the top of the stalls and some had even settled down for the night in their nests, when they should have been outside doing their thing!

Next day we returned to Addo and this time managed to see all their big game such as Elephant, Buffalo & Kudu,  only the Lion eluded us. Thankfully the biting insects left us pretty much alone that night. In the morning we packed up to go and by now we both looked like we had an attack of smallpox from all the bites two nights before. As I paid Mrs Whittle she diplomatically ignored my spotty complexion but apologised again for the Mickies. This time I asked what the hell are Mickies? She explained it means black fly which come every year at this time but this year they were particularly bad - amen to that!

Next                                                           back