While we were in Port Elizabeth which is the sort of town that people invariably ask, "Why?" when you're heading that way, we hired a car. Unbelievable that it may be... we actually managed to hire a 1983 volkswagen golf. It was amazing! So dated, well so dated for a car from a globally renown rental firm anyway but fabulous fun nonetheless. Granted, it's not quite a Land Rover so it's hardly your classic safari car but it has windows (manual wind up, obviously) through which you can view the big game and in it we drove to Addo National Park. The Addo is a relatively small national park and so unlike say, Krueger National park, is quite manageablee in just a day. It is also home to some 400 elephants and even with my notorious bad luck we couldn't miss seeing one of these giants.

Within minutes of arrival at the park, the intrepid hunter duo had spotted their first big African Animal. Regrettably, it was a huge tortoise which I suspect would be hard to barbeque and is far from deadly thus must be considered only a very interesting giant snail with legs. Shortly afterwards our luck started to change. We spotted an enormous African Chicken. These beasts who haven't evolved since, well... since pretty much evolution began... have huge claws on the end of their long, skinny and unsightly leg, tiny pointless wings (which would be about as effective as buffalo wings although probably not as good with beer) and a whole hat store of silly feathers. Think Big Bird from Sesame Street only with black plumage and you've got the African Chicken. Heide will swear it was an ostrich, but I know better.

Just minutes later, we pulled up at a watering hole (alas not the real kind as I was at the wheel of our mean safari machine) and waited for the animals to come to us. For literally minutes we sat there motionless like great predators waiting on hapless prey to drop into our ironclad trap. Then all of a sudden from nowhere, okay... it was under a scrubby tree... there came a trit trotting little piggy thing with the kind of looks not even a mother could love. Yes, I'm talking about those adorable tusk wielding hoofed and fantastically tasty little dinners on legs -- the warthog. Much to Heide's disgust, I was salivating thinking, "Mmmmm... pork chops." when a large gray wrinkled big mamma of an Elephant appeared. She checked the air for danger and quite unconcerned that my pal bacon the warthog was drinking dropped her great trunk into the pond and proceeded to sup about 2000 gallons of water. She was soon followed by the rest of her herd. A total of 15 in all including the the ooh ahh aren't they cute inducing babies of the gang.  They shared a long communal drink and a few trumpeting fountain sprays before they ambled away into the bush to munch down a few more trees. Absolutely awesome!

Throughout the rest of our day on roads both paved and more traditionally African (If I wasn't supposed to take my 2 wheel drive 1.4 on these tracks... aaah... Sorry.) We saw whole hosts of great animals including Kudu - top horns. Antelope - lion fodder. Hartebeest - very meaty! Dung beetles - Umm... dungy and beetle like. And the odd Carcass that had mostly been picked dry and was just waiting for the hyenas to come and polish off. There's no waste around here. But the animals that got the biggest response from Heide were a herd of stripy donkeys. Yep, Prison Horses! You know those Gee Gees with giant teeth and a mohawk haircut?? Precisely, Zebras. I'm not sure why but she was desperate to see Zebras (I'd prefer to see Simba and his pals take one down for lunch) but she was. I'm delighted to say that when we finally found them she was not disappointed. Typically it's me who gets a little carried away when spotting wildlife but this was Heide's turn. She zoomed in so close with the camera that one of the grazers has Canon imprinted on his hide and she fired off more rounds of film than 200 paparazzi who have spotted Brittany Spears sunbathing topless on a party isle beach while supping from a bucket of tequila. For those who aren't quite with me and I know that's probably most folk most of the time.... that is a lot of photos!! Still, it was absolutely wonderful to see someone else get as excited about wild creatures.

It was a fabulous day and we'd certainly recommend it to anyone who is heading to P.E. so they can preempt the question, "Why are you going there?" From here we will continue traveling along the coast to South Africa's legendary "Garden Route."