Cool down in the swimming pool just around the corner from the restaurant and the reception office in the main camp – if you’re an overnight visitor.

Addo Rest Camp has large, even stands and the ablution facilities are clean and neat. As a bonus, it’s close to the Nyathi waterhole.

Watching a waterhole is like watching test  cricket: There are endless stretches where nothing  happens, and suddenly there’s action galore. Like now, at Nyathi waterhole in the main camp,  where I’m among a crowd of people watching a herd of about 30 elephants ambling down the hill.  Cameras click and everyone whispers excitedly. In front of us a few elephants roll and splash in the  mud. Calves hide under their mothers. Later I move to a lookout on a lower level, in a hide, where  you have a water-level view of the elephants. I watch them, transfixed.

Elephants are to this section of Addo what the Blue Bulls are to Loftus: You can’t imagine the one  without the other. And to think that once upon a time there were hardly any elephants in the park. Early in the previous century, farmers in the Sundays River valley got fed-up with the elephants for  causing crop damage. In 1919 the government appointed a big-game hunter to cull them. He shot  120 in a single year. Then, in 1931, the park was proclaimed to protect the survivors. From humble  beginnings – 11 elephants roaming 20km2 – the Addo population has grown to 560 animals, and  the park now attracts about 140000 visitors annually. In August 2010 the fences between the main  camp and the Colchester section were taken down, so the elephants now have much more room to  move around. A few bulls moved into new territory within a week.

After all the excitement at Nyathi waterhole, I set off to explore the 90km network of game-viewing  roads in this section of the park. I drive slowly, past thickets of dense spekboom and thorn trees,  expecting a roadblock of elephants at any moment. I stop for a leopard tortoise toddling across the  road and for a sounder of warthogs, tails in the air. But there’s not a single elephant in sight. I see  kudu everywhere, though. They’re almost as common as impala are in the Kruger Park. I stop at the  Zuurkop lookout to see if I can spot elephants in the forest below. “Beware of the lions,” a sign at the  ookout warns, but today Addo’s lions are just as shy as its elephants. Later in the afternoon I  comb the area around Gwarrie and around the Rooi and Hapoor dams, some of the elephants’  most popular hangouts. I had hoped for a classic Addo scene with a herd of elephants watched by a  pack of vehicles – dads looking brave behind the steering wheels and children saucer-eyed  pressed up against the glass. But alas, not today. Maybe tomorrow will be my lucky day. At least I  saw plenty of ellies at Nyathi waterhole this morning. Let’s go deeper into the wilderness...