On my journey to Cape Town with Bazbus and after extending my stay in Coffee Bay, it was time to continue and look for my next adventure. Port Elizabeth is the end of the Wild Coast and the beginning of the Garden Route, so for my case, it is a mandatory stop with Bazbus. I was planning to stop here so I could visit my last safari in Africa and tour the Addo Elephant National Park.
I had been traveling for several days and I decided that I was going to give myself a little treat so I booked a private room in this city. I got a great hostel very close to all the main sights in Port Elizabeth called Island Vibes. Some friend recommended me to stay in this hostel for my next destination in Jeffrey’s bay but when I saw there was the same hostel, I knew it was a great option.
Port Elizabeth is a city with a lot of history it was conquered by the British and Portuguese and the Apartheid was very important here so there are several places to visit. On the city tour, we went to Fort Frederick which formerly belonged to the Portuguese to protect the entire bay, The Campanile, a memorial to the British who came to these lands, the feather market, the library (one of the few in which black people could enter), the lighthouse and the old post office where several meetings of the anti-Apartheid movements took place.
As we were walking the streets of Port Elizabeth and the night was coming, we saw that the Warriors Cricket Stadium was open. Asking, they told us that the Port Elizabeth team was playing against the Cape Town team. I’ve never seen a cricket match in my life so we decided to go inside. Although none of us knew absolutely nothing about cricket, it was a good excuse to sit down and have a few beers.
Addo Parque Nacional de Elefantes
The guys at Island Vibes helped me contact and book the Safari so I didn’t have to worry about a thing. The truck picks you up at your hostel and from there you go directly to the entrance of the national park. Formerly, this park was a farm where the owner banned elephant hunting. It was the only farm in the territory that did this, protecting the elephants from the growing elephant hunting in the area.
Nowadays, with the help of other parks, there are several wild animals and it is a great place to see the big 5 of Africa. Unlike other parks that I could visit on my tour around Africa, this one has a special center where there are couple of restaurants, a hotel, a supermarket and it is possible to rest. Next to this center, they have a water well where several elephants go to drink water and it is possible to see them from very close.
