Addo Elephant National Park

Great place to get close to several elephants

Visiting the Addy Elephant National Park has been my first safari.
After we entered the park and went along the road for a few minutes an elephant just passed by our car. That was pretty exciting because we did not if we just can wait or should leave. But the elephant has been really relaxed and just walked along the road. The highlight was the stop at a water hole during the midday sun. I guess that there have been 50 elephants close to each other. Watching this scenery for 30min has been fantastic.
Besides elephants we also saw zebras and warthogs.

Addo Elephant National Park is the perfect spot for a day trip.

Nice self-drive experience with lots of Elephants around.

We arrived late in the evening at the campground in Addo National Park. Campground was quite packed, but nice. Clean facilities. Camp office was just being rebuild. There's a waterhole where you can observe the animals. As soon as the lights at the waterhole switched off at around 10pm, an elephant family and a rhino showed up. Was great to see the standoff between those 2 in the dark.
Next day we did a self-drive tour through the park - amazing. So many Elephants, turtles, all kinds of deer, and even a lion crossed our park. There's a bushcamp in the middle where we had a picknick.
All in all Addo was a great experience!

ADDO is a massive National Park with lots of wildlife, in addition to the large number of elephants. We had a wonderful day there - the highlight was seeing a family of elephants with 2 young cubs learning to feed. All at close quarters, fabulous.

Lots of elephants! Otherwise there was not so much on offer for us. Still worth a visit though.

I prebooked alot of my SA trip and felt Addo was the hardest place to book. Their accommodation is booked separately from the game drives and restaurant bookings so nothing seems straight forward, linked or easy. It took a total of over 20 emails to book anything, information on the website is wrong, email addresses on the website bounce back - i honestly don't know how they're so busy. I was expecting great things since it is the second biggest park in SA, both of the Addo accommodation we stayed in were lovely (better than expected) altho the plunge pool at our nyathi rest camp booking was very dirty so I sadly didn't use it at all. We did two guided game drives that did end up enabling us to see animals we hadn't seen at other reserves but the park is so big and the bush so dense that its hard to actually see anything unless you happen to be lucky and find the animal crossing the road. We didn't do a self drive, drive which we regret but as we stayed in the Nyathi rest camp it ment we were locked out of the park and made us feel like we couldn't explore as much as we would have wanted. The reception is a frustrating place were staff definitely take their time processing things. Paying for game drives is unorganised and could definitely be dealt with better. All in all i'm glad i got to see some animals as if i hadnt it would have been a waste. I'm not sure i would recommend Addo - maybe if your in the area or driving passed and have a few hours or a day to kill then definitely go but if pre booking i hope its a better experience than i had.

Addo or Addon’t ?

After several trips to Kruger, Etosha and the KTP, I decided to give Addo a go.
I have to be honest, it was a disappointment . A small park with little real bush vibe due to the da t that you can see the surrounding farms, towns and wind farms from large parts of the park.
The vegetation isn’t the most attractive either, and the large open areas looked more like fields, giving a “safari park” feel.
There is no doubt that the elephant encounters are the highlight, but a day trip is probably enough, with maybe a night at the excellent Addo main camp to give the best chance of an early morning lion encounter.
But it’s not Kruger, a totally different experience and the 30 minute drive and access to boat trips are probably the only reason for choosing it.

Great game viewing. Very poor food at main restaurant.

Rich in wildlife. Good viewing of elephants and plenty of other game.

The restaurant was a disappointment with Lack luster service and food quality poor.

Elephants make the park

Huts okay. A little inconvenient that cooking and washing up facilities not on premises. A clean-up needs to be undertaken around the vegetation as quite a bit of litter lying around

Did not see that much game and park very dry

Addo elephant Park is really worth a visit

We spent two nights in Addo, sleeping at the Nyathi rest camp. This accommodation is beautifully positioned in that it is really very remote (no wifi or cellphone signal - sometimes a blessing....). There is a limited amount of game to see at the camp but the scenery and peace make up for this. The accommodation is very nicely appointed and the kitchen has pretty much everything one could want (only two of every piece of crockery and cutlery - which is a bit limiting). Parks people at the camp were friendly and attentive.
We really enjoyed the park, the lists of animals that one can see does not compare with Kruger BUT this does not mean that the game viewing was not great. We saw many, many elephant. So anyone wanting a close encounter of the elephant kind - this is the place to go.
I have never seen quite so many Kudu, there are quite literally herds of Kudu - usually one encounters a solitary Kudu half obscured by a bush - not in Addo, they are as plentiful as Impala are in Kruger - well not quite but one started to think that way. The bush pigs are very plentiful. We also saw lots of zebra.
The waterholes are the places to go to, easy viewing but one has to pick your time - as is the case at any waterhole - the animals are there and then they are gone.
We are not big "birders" but we saw some nice birds and the cherry was the secretary bird - wonderful.
The roads have been pretty well maintained and the restaurant and shops (some very nice up market curios - similar to what we have seen in the airport at ORT) are in pretty good shape. Overall we were impressed.
Addo clearly has some problems with regards to over grazing in some area and while one could be critical I would rather see it as a work in progress - especially when one considers the state of some other parks in South Africa/Africa.