Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Mar. 12, 2023

Port Elizabeth is a port city in Eastern Cape province, southern South Africa. It lies in Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality on Algoa Bay of the Indian Ocean, its deepwater harbor enclosed by a breakwater. Port Elizabeth was established in 1820 as a British settlement around Fort Frederick (1799; the oldest British building in southern Africa) and was incorporated as a town in 1861. It was named by Sir Rufane Donkin, the acting governor of the Cape Colony, for his deceased wife, Lady Elizabeth. Port Elizabeth became a city in 1913, after completion of the Kimberley Railroad (1873) spurred development of the port.

The city climbs the foot of a 200 to 300-foot plateau and occupies both banks of the small Baakens River. The residential area is on flat tableland, with an industrial sector at the north end. Port Elizabeth is dotted with parks, notably St. George’s Park, which is home to the Port Elizabeth Cricket Club, and Settlers’ Park Nature Reserve. The city is also known for its oceanarium and many museums. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, founded in 2005 through the merger of the University of Port Elizabeth with PE Technikon and the Port Elizabeth campus of Vista University, is located there. Tourists are attracted by fine beaches, surfing, and nearby Addo Elephant National Park. Excellent communications, cheap power, and water combine to create one of the country’s busiest manufacturing centers, which is largely dominated by the automotive industry. The city’s port at times handles imports for Zambia and Zimbabwe and exports manganese ore, wool, petroleum products, and fruit.

Port Elizabeth, the neighboring towns of Despatch and Uitenhage, and other surrounding areas are administered by the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality. The population of greater Port Elizabeth was 1,237,452 in 2020.

We debarked and settled in a comfortable motor coach for a trip into the hills to the Kwantu Game Reserve. This post is going to be a little different from previous ones as I shall mostly feature the animals.

The Kwantu Big 5 Private Game Reserve Eastern Cape is a malaria-fee adventure. Situated between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, this luxury game lodge and 15,000-acre nature reserve is located in one of the most biologically varied regions of the country.

The Private Game Reserve is located on the legendary Sidbury Plains, in the heart of Frontier Country, along the banks of the Bushman’s River – an hour’s drive from Nelson Mandela Bay.

From the comfort of specially equipped open Land Rovers, we encountered the impressive BIG 5 roaming on the plains.

Here the elephant, lion, cheetah, buffalo and white rhino, monarchs of the African bush roam the plains as freely as they did hundreds of years ago.

We were awestruck by the zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, and many of the common and rare antelope who have roamed these plains for centuries. From the delicate solitary Blue duiker, who melts out of the brush at the edge of a clearing, to the towering kudu bull, who fixes his gaze on you as he browses nearby.

As we entered the road to the preserve,

the first to greet us was this fine animal.

We headed to a beautiful lodge where we boarded Range Rovers and headed into the reserve. Before entering the wide-open reserve, we encountered several animals who were being rehabilitated.

The next animal we encountered was a complete surprise. Tigers are not native to Africa, but these Bengal tigers have been brought to the preserve for rehabilitation.

This beautiful young cheetah woke from his nap to check us out.

Next, we drove out on a bone-jarring trip into the veldt to see what we could see. The weather was cool and overcast, so we expected the animals to be up and about, and we were not disappointed.

The wildebeest (or Gnu) stands about 4.5 ft. tall and weighs 330-550 lbs. Its lifespan is about 20 years. It is a favorite prey animal of the lion.

Hippos are the second largest land animals, but they love water and can stay submerged for up to five minutes. They are also the deadliest land animals in Africa, killing more humans than lions, elephants, or crocodiles. They can weigh up to two tons and are speedy runners. Despite their reputation for being aggressive, hippopotamuses are actually plant eaters (herbivores). They can consume almost 100 pounds of grasses every day to help them get the nutrients they need. Hippos can live up to 45 years in the wild, although the average lifespan is around 35 years. They are susceptible to several diseases, such as anthrax, river blindness, and schistosomiasis.

The African Ibis is a striking white ibis with a naked black head and neck and black legs and feet. It has white wings framed by black wingtips and trailing edges. It can be encountered in almost any open habitat from wild wetlands to farmland and rubbish dumps.

They wade in shallow lagoons, lakes, bays, and marshes and use their slender, down-curved bills to feed on small fishes and soft mollusks. They fly with neck and legs extended, alternately flapping and sailing. Ibises usually breed in vast colonies, building compact stick nests low in bushes or trees and laying three to five eggs, usually dull white or mottled with brown.

Known as rice or white ants, they are not even closely related to ants. They are termites, which makes them a much closer relative to the cockroach rather than the ant. These termites are found in the southern part of Africa, and they build above-ground mounds, consuming more bark and grass than all the giraffes, kudus, gazelles and zebras combined. What makes them truly impressive is that a colony will go through around a quarter of a ton of soil each year, transporting it through their tunnels and filling it with nutrients. In fact, it is due to this activity that you will find lush grasslands areas in the otherwise arid savannas.

The impala is reddish-brown with white hair inside the ears, over each eye and on the chin, upper throat, underparts, and buttocks. A narrow black line runs along the middle of the lower back to the tail, and a vertical black stripe appears on the back of each thigh. Impalas have unique brush-like tufts of black hair that cover a scent gland located just above the heel on each hind leg. The female is similar to the male but does not have horns. The male’s graceful lyre-shaped horns are about 1.25 to 3 feet long.

The impala’s social organization allows it to adapt to environmental conditions. The average female herd is between 15 and 100 individuals. When food is plentiful, males become territorial, shepherding females about their land. In dry periods, territories are abandoned as herds must travel farther to find food and clans tend to overlap and intermix with each other.

A surprised impala herd will leap about in what appears to be a disorganized way. However, this reaction helps keep the herd together and is also an anti-predator technique. Initially, an individual impala leaps up, casting about from left to right, bringing individuals into contact with each other. High jumps also allow impalas to release signals from the fetlock scent gland in midair, easier for a rapidly running impala to pick up.

Able to both graze and browse, the impala has a greater and more reliable food supply than animals that do either one or the other. It eats young grass shoots in the rainy season and herbs and shrubs at other times.

The Blesbok (white-faced antelope) is a tall, medium-sized antelope. They typically stand 31 to 39 in high at the shoulder and measure 47 to 83 in along the head and body. Their weight can vary from 110 to 340 lb. The Blesbok is a chocolate brown color, with a white underside and a white stripe from the forehead to the tip of the nose, although there is a brown stripe across the white near the eyes in most Blesbok.

Did you know that the word “Elephant” is actually Latin for “huge Arch”? These animals certainly are huge and impressive beasts. In fact, the elephant is the largest living land mammal in the world. This lady came so close to us we could almost reach out and touch her.

A male elephant can grow up to 13 feet in height and weigh up to 7 tons while their female counterparts can still weigh in at a mere 3.5 tons.

To feed an animal of such gigantic proportions takes a lot of food. Their daily food intake is almost as much as 4-7% of their body weight. When you are an elephant, that equates to finding and eating an awful lot of food. As you would expect, all that food needs to be digested and dozed off, which is why our elephant friends can deposit upwards of 330 lbs. of dung daily!

Elephants are herbivores and only eat grasses, herbs, fruit, plants and trees. Their healthy, vegetarian diet is obviously good for them as the average elephant has a life span of around 70 odd years.

The giraffe is any of four species in the genus Giraffa of long-necked cud-chewing hoofed mammals of Africa, with long legs and a coat pattern of irregular brown patches on a light background. Giraffes are the tallest of all land animals; males (bulls) may exceed 18 feet in height, and the tallest females (cows) are about 15 feet. Using prehensile tongues almost 20 inches long, they are able to browse foliage almost 20 feet from the ground. Giraffes are a common sight in grasslands and open woodlands in East Africa.

Giraffes live in nonterritorial groups of up to 20. Home ranges are as small as 33 square miles in wetter areas but up to 580 square miles in dry regions. The animals are gregarious, a behavior that apparently allows for increased vigilance against predators. They have excellent eyesight, and when one giraffe stares, for example, at a lion a kilometer away, the others look in that direction too. Giraffes live up to 26 years in the wild and slightly longer in captivity.

White rhinos are the second-largest land mammal, and their name comes from the Afrikaan’s, a West Germanic language, word “weit” which means wide and refers to the animal’s mouth. Also known as the square-lipped rhinoceros, white rhinos have a square upper lip with almost no hair.

The majority (98.8%) of the white rhinos occur in just four countries: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. White rhinos were thought to be extinct in the late 19th century, but in 1895 a small population of fewer than 100 individuals was discovered in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. After more than a century of protection and management, they are now classified as Near Threatened and around 18,000 animals exist in protected areas and private game reserves. They are the only one of the five rhino species that are not endangered.

It weighs slightly more on average than a hippopotamus. It has a massive body and large head, a short neck and broad chest. The head and body length is 12 to 13 ft in males and 11 to 12 ft in females, and the shoulder height is 5.58 to 6.10 ft in the male and 5.25 to 5.81 ft in the female. The male, averaging about 5,100 lb. is heavier than the female, at an average of about 3,700 lb.

White rhinos are grazers. Its wide, square upper lip is adapted for feeding on grasses. White rhinos can live to be 35-40 years of age. Gestation lasts approximately 16 months, and mothers give birth to one calf every 2-3 years.

Zebras are perhaps the most stylish of Africa’s stars, with their characteristically stunning coats of black and white stripes. These distant relatives of the horse are a frequent sight on any African safari and consist of three different species: Grévy’s zebra, Plains Zebra, and the Mountain zebra. This is a heard of Plains Zebras.

Similar to horses, zebras have barrel chests, long faces, and long necks. They sport lovely erect mains and have a tuft of hair on their tails, perfect for swatting away flies. And like horses, they walk on their tiptoes, with each of their long legs ending in a single toe covered with a hard, durable hoof.

But what sets the zebra apart from other equines is its distinct coat. The vertical stripes slash across its neck and body, then curve horizontally around the rump and legs. Each zebra’s stripes are unique to the individual and make them recognizable in the herd. When a foal is born, its stripes start out as slightly browner but then become darker with age. There are many theories about why zebras evolved their stripes, and it seems that perhaps the most likely answer is that the stripes function as a way to deter biting insects like tsetse flies and mosquitos.

Zebras are what is known as hindgut fermenters, which means that they can extract nutrition out of low-quality feed such as grass and bark. Zebras are for the most part grazers, but will browse when their preferred food source is unavailable, and spend as much as 80% of their day feeding.

Plains zebras play a particularly interesting role in the ecosystem, as they are pioneer gazers, nibbling and feeding on the top-most layer of grass, thereby opening up the grassland for more specialized grazers looking for the short grasses tucked below.

A herd of zebra can often be seen moving in what looks like single file, with the highest-ranking mare at the front, followed by her offspring, down the hierarchy, and ending in the family stallion bringing up the rear.

As we return to the lodge, we pause to observe the beautiful land of the preserve. We are struck by its vast majesty and its silence.

At the lodge, a buffet Xhosa lunch was served: Salad, chicken, beef stroganoff, meat balls and pizza! There were also several deserts, and everything was delicious.

Then it was time to return to the ship. Here are some scenes of the town of Port Elizabeth we passed.

Next, we sail for Cape Town to visit Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.