Addo Elephant National Park

This is a place where humans come face to face with real life big foot, one of the big five, the mighty elephant. Situated 45 minutes North East of the friendly city of Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, lies Addo National Park. Addo boasts a variety of wildlife, most famously, Addo is home to the gentle giant, the great African Elephant.

When visiting the park, you're almost guaranteed to witness the amazing cuteness of a baby elephant, frolicking in a muddy pond.

Elephants are an emotional bunch, tearing for the passed with tears dripping from their eyelids. Along with the emotion comes a great care for their young. The tiny elephants are weaned for 2 years, protected by an entire heard of elephants.

What amazes me the most about these magnificent creatures, is their converging nose and upper lip, the trunk. Elephants can store up to 10 L of water in their trunk, to either fill their thirsty tongues or to splash a fellow elephant in the face.

An intriguing fact of these mighty beasts is the elegant and constant flapping of their large ears. The numerous amounts of tiny, thin veins woven through their enormous ears allows all the heat to escape their system. Another peculiar act of the elephant, is their bathing in mud. Sometimes tinting their rough skin into a charcoal black. However, there is method to their madness - the mud act as a sunscreen, allowing the mighty beasts to escape the treacherous African heat.