A journey in the ancient footsteps

Addo Elephant National Park occupies a huge expanse of the Eastern Cape, populated by hundreds of the great

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Sunrises in the Eastern Cape are a sight to behold.

(Photo: Mafungwase Media)

The sun announced itself pretty early in Cookhouse on a Thursday in late February and the mercury flirted near 20°C as early as 6am.

Further south, beachgoers would have been chuffed - the ocean is about 100km away as the crow flies.

The N10 is replete with crawling trucks, slowing early morning traffic. The road is flanked by farms, some of which are mothers to South Africa's newish type of farms: wind farms. There's more on these roads: elephants and aloes aplenty. Just look.

Less dramatically, images of this animal and plant feature on the Eastern Cape's vehicle registration plates.

Our road trip leads to Addo Elephant National Park, home to the Big Seven if you include southern right whales and white sharks in the traditional Big Five. The park's endless expanse and variety of inhabitants, from dung beetles to savannah elephants, is a story that photos can only try to tell.

I later learnt from Nceba Nogaya, a ranger at Addo, that most of the routes we use in Africa today were started by elephants as their pathways long, long ago.

I thus imagined those beasts covering long distances, frolicking and gambolling as they crossed the Zambezi on their walk to, say, Conakry or Mombasa.