Addo is situated in the beautiful Sundays River Valley, only 40 min from Port Elizabeth airport. The accessibility of this area coupled with its close proximity to the Garden Route and Cape Town makes the Addo Elephant Park and its surrounding areas an extremely desirable destination that is already very popular with international visitors. The Addo Elephant National Park was proclaimed in 1931 and today this finely tuned ecosystem is home to over 300 elephants. This makes the Addo Park the most concentrated elephant reserve in Africa thus giving one a good chance of experiencing some of the best elephant viewing in the world. Apart from elephant, this park is home to black rhino, buffalo and various antelope species.
Addo is only a half an hour drive from the famous Shamwari Game Reserve, which is home to "the Big 5". Shamwari offers excellent day trips that include lunch, a game drive and a visit to the Born Free Foundation and a traditional village. This costs R850 per person in season.
After widespread hunting in the 1800's and an extermination program in the 1920's the Addo National Elephant Park was proclaimed in 1931 as a sanctuary for the remaining 11 elephants. This herd has build up to over 360 making it one of the densest populations of the giant herbivores in the world. The reserve is also home to a wide range of other species including buffalo, black rhinoceros, eland, kudu, red hartebeest, zebra, other smaller antelope species, more than 165 bird species as well as being the last refuge of the flightless dung beetle.
The South African National Parks have successfully formed long term partnerships with donor organisations one being the International Fund for Animal Welfare. With these funds they are busy buying additional land and recreating key migratory corridors and expanding the Park to a proposed area of approximately 400 000 hectares including a 60 000 hectare marine reserve - this will make it the most biologically diverse park in Africa conserving 6 of this country's 7 biomes, a total of 12 vegetation types and South Africa's second largest elephant and black rhino populations.
The Sundays River Valley is world famous for its citrus fruit production - the Sundays River Citrus Co-op alone exports an excess of 6 million cartons of fruit to Northern Hemisphere Countries every year. The valley is reputed to produce some of the finest quality lemons in the world.
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