Hello everyone,

On day eight, the 24th of March we drove from Oudtshoorn to Kirkwood. This was again a really nice drive. Kirkwood is a really small town just before Addo. We first couldn’t find the place we wanted to go to for dinner but later we found out it was all the way up the hill, we still went there though.

On the 25th of March we drove through the Addo Elephant National Park with our own car on our way to the Amakhala Reserve. We saw a lot of animals, Elephants, Zebra, Kudu, Red Hartebeest, Buffalo and different kinds of birds. We drove around for about three and a half hours, after this we drove to the Amakhala Reserve which is just a bit further than Addo. Amakhala is a private game reserve with different accommodations in the park, only people who stay at one of the accommodations can do game drives, so it’s not as busy as Addo is where everybody can go in with their own car. When we arrived there we got something to eat and at four o’clock it was time for the first game drive. We went with this big game drive safari 4x4 jeep thing, you know what I mean. First we saw a lot of giraffes and zebra, the giraffes were pretty close. On the way to the other side of the park we saw some kudu and red hartebeest. We stopped at a point where you can look over the whole reserve with the river on the side, it looks amazing from there. Then we went to look for the lions, they knew where the were, because all the rangers can communicate with each other. Then we found them, the only have four lions in the reserve, three females and one male. On the way back to the accommodation we saw a few elephants, but our ranger said we would look for them again the next morning. After the game drive we had dinner, we had dinner in a room with a big table in the middle with all the guests, it was a bit weird but a nice experience I can say.

The next morning was way too early but it was worth it. We had a game drive at six in the morning till nine. We first went to look for the cheetahs because one of the rangers saw them that morning, but we couldn’t find them. After that we went to the place where the rhinos were, we saw seven rhinos but they can’t say if they have more or not because of security reasons because a lot of rhinos get killed for the horns. Then we went to look for the elephants, and we found the whole herd! They were walking in front and next to the jeep, that was amazing! After this we had breakfast. After breakfast we made our way to Plettenbergbaai with a stop in Jeffrey’s Bay for lunch. When we arrived in Plett, we had some time and a bit later we went for dinner.

Simon