Safari to Addo

a large population of elephants

Addo Elephant National Park is located 50 km north of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa.

The Addo Reserve started life in 1931 as a small conservation project designed to protect a single herd of just sixteen elephants which remained in the area.

The park has grown substantially since then to 1200 square kilometres and now hosts over 450 elephants, plus a broad range of other wildlife including small numbers of lions, hyenas and hook-lipped rhinos.

Ambitious expansion plans have already seen the reserve grow north into the mountains and plains of the Karoo and south to the dune-fields and island of the coast, now making it the third largest reserve in the country.

Addo is a very accessible reserve which represents one of the lowest cost ways of going on safari, since it’s possible to self-drive to one of the lodges outside the reserve and visit on day trips from there.

It’s also malaria free and many of the lodges are particularly child-friendly.

However the reserve is not totally pristine, being partly composed of reclaimed farmland, being fenced and surrounded in part by inhabited areas. The sense of wilderness is considerably lower than in many of the more substantial safari areas further north on the continent.

The visitor traffic can also get quite high at times and there can be considerable numbers of self-drivers inside the reserve, making the whole experience feel a little bit on the lame at times.

We tend to recommend these areas most commonly to families with very small children and people who happen to be in the area anyway and are happy to simply see a few animals.

The best safari experiences are at those lodges which have their own private concession areas within the reserve, notably Gorah Elephant Camp and Riverbend Lodge.

In the pretty farmland of the Sundays River Valley there’s a handful of excellent guest-houses, which can be used as bases from which to explore the reserve on day trips. Naturally this is not as pure a safari experience as those listed above, but it can still be a very pleasant and is an incredibly cost effective way to include a little bit of safari into a self-drive trip. Notable amongst these options are Woodall Country House and Hopefield House.

lower cost safari area, mainly for self-drivers