A year ago I was commissioned for a wedding close to Port Elizabeth. I can’t help but feel excited when I get booked for an out-of-town shoot. This means that I have an opportunity to take a couple of days off work and explore new areas that I haven’t been to.
In a conversation with my friend Jarrod Cross, he mentioned that I just had to make a turn past his favorite place while in the area – Addo Elephant National Park. This is South Africa’s third-largest national park which is internationally renowned as being the best place to view elephants in the wild. Starting out with only 11 of the remaining elephants in the region this park has grown tremendously, today housing 600 or so elephants.
Elephants are not the only animal you can spot there. Addo is one of the only parks in the world to be classified as a “Big 7” reserve, conserving the elephants, lions, rhinos, leopards, buffalo as well the southern right whales and great white sharks off the coast of Algoa Bay.
Less than an hour’s drive away from Port Elizabeth, I was kept entertained for hours on my own self-drive through the park. There wasn’t a moment that my car wasn’t surrounded by herds of the world’s largest terrestrial mammals. I viewed them from arm’s length, and with little effort, I could possibly touch them.
I am definitely planning on coming back here in the near future and hopefully doing some hiking, just one of the many other activities offered by the park.
Until then, here are a few of my favorite images from my first trip.