End of the cruise - first stop in Africa - and Stan's trip report


Wow! Africa

While we’ve been really close to Africa, we had never actually stopped here. We’ve seen Morocco from the Straits of Gibraltar and have been through the Suez Canal but no Egypt stops. Plus – this time it’s safari oriented.

Our first stop in South Africa was in Port Elizabeth. Since we were planning more time in the National Parks, we thought we’d go out to the park closest to the city – either 30 or 60 minutes depending on the gate entrance you use. We had been advised by breakfast table mates to go directly to the main gate. This was a good choice and also took us along a fairly long stretch of road along the townships which was interesting to see and wonder about.

At the park we showed our Wild Card (kind of an annual pass) that we had such hard time getting (just needed to plan 3 months out instead of two to allow for mailing from South Africa).
We had a great day at Addo Elephant National Park – came across a zebra within a mile of the gate, then more – then one elephant, then a few more and more zebras. Then we started seeing hoofed creatures with a variety of types of horns – hopefully by the end of the next month we’ll be able to name them 😊. We saw a couple of ostrich and water buffalo – and little meerkats like we have at our zoo. Since its focus is on elephants, there were definitely some there – the last watering hole must have had at least a hundred at the water and around the hillsides – they were everywhere. Very fun watching them play in the muddy water – lots of babies of various sizes, too. After a while one of the matriarchs started moving off and about 15 – 20 followed her. This was a sign to the small zebra group (about 10) to wander on down to the water, but NO, a young male was having nothing of that. He might not have any power in the elephant herd, but he could fight off the zebras 😊 😊.  He had to try a couple of times, but the zebras finally gave up and wandered off. Wish I’d gotten a video of that action.

After that, we needed to find our way to the south entrance to head back to the ship. It wasn’t hard but with a variety of road types it took a bit of time. As it turned out, we probably had an hour to spare to be out of the park gates on time, but we were glad to be back on the ship before it was dark. Overall it was a really fun day and a good safari start to our month in Africa.

It's been a great three months - hoping for one more. We won't have the capability to post any we're home but I hope you've enjoy the journey so far.

Here is Stan's first Africa photo blog: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JAGEkwazQ3WLWPTEI5QXcXtpsIUBZOiT/view?usp=sharing

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