Port Elizabeth to Addo Elephant National Park

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Today we made it to the lovely Addo Elephant National Park, a quick drive north of Port Elizabeth.  We made it into the park just in time for a noon game drive - lucky, since, everyone we have been meeting told us that the game drives fill up fast and are hard to get into if you don't book ahead.  Our game drive was awesome - we were in a large safari-type land rover which had elevated seats for premium game viewing.  We were also lucky to have a half-full game drive, meaning we could move aroudn the vehicle with ease and without tourist heads in our pictures!

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We saw warthogs (lots of baby warthogs!), a buffalo, and best of all a giant herd of elephants at a waterhole!  We counted about 40 up close and perhaps another 20 further off (hard to count because they stand so close together).  There were bathing elephants, drinking elephants, playing elephants, baby elephants, oh my!  It is amazing how quiet all those elephants were.  The most prevalent noises were the splashing of bathing elephants and the squealing of mother warthogs as they herded their babies back and forth in front of the waterhole.  On our way back to the main camp we also saw the fast-leaping kudu.  Star-gazing from our room was wonderful - the spider the length of my hand sitting on our door handle was not.