Although Port Elizabeth is a large town, it is primarily industrial. From a tourism point of view it is known for being at the end of the Garden generic viagra in the us Route, the beaches, and its proximity to the Addo Elephant Park. In a couple of days we’ll be on safari in Kruger which is unquestionably the best reserve in South Africa, but Addo offers a slightly different experience and focuses on elephants which we particularly wanted to see.

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Addo provide organised game drives which normally give you more chance of finding the animals. However, as we’re doing game drives in Kruger, we decided to drive ourselves around the park. Just before leaving we walked through the base camp and came across a view point overlooking a watering hole with a huge herd of elephants – there must have been more than fifty there! We sat and watched them for a long time – drinking, washing and having the occasional territorial stand off. Having only paid 160 rand (£11) entry, we were fairly confident that we’d had our money’s worth without even leaving the camp, but we set off in the hope of seeing some of the other animals.

Addo is very small compared to Kruger, spanning 30km from top to bottom. We took more than four hours to drive across it, stopping frequently for potential animal sightings. One of the first we saw close up was a zebra, soon followed by a monitor lizard, warthog, red hartebeest, tortoise, ostrich, blue crane, black-backed jackal, bushbuck and some monkeys. There had been a few lion sightings earlier in the day but we assumed that they would be sleeping out of sight during the afternoon. However, as we drove around one of the bends we saw a lot of cars stopped and facing towards one of the bushes, under which was a male lion dozing in the shade. After a short while, he wandered across to a nearby watering hole – apparently oblivious to the array of people and cameras watching him – before finding another bush to shelter from the sun. Being so close to a lion in his natural habitat was a very unique experience!

In the end it was a lack of lunch (and petrol) that persuaded us to leave, but I think it’s fair to say that we’re all looking forward to Kruger even more than we were before!

Back in Port Elizabeth we decided to give the beaches a second chance and this time drove towards the town centre to some of the more popular seaside areas. Although the sun was starting to go down, it was much calmer than yesterday and I even managed a swim in the sea.

Our last dinner on the Garden Route was at the Mediterranean Seafood restaurant which had a huge choice of fish dishes. The vegetarian platter was very nice too! We then headed back to Brighton Lodge to finish the half bottles of wine we’d accumulated over the last week and pack. Tomorrow we fly to Johannesburg!