Review: The Chrislin African Lodge and Crisscross Tours

Last updated on September 3rd, 2017 at 07:16 pm

In South Africa today, it’s almost impossible to see the big game species outside parks. Poaching, human encroachment and the attendant loss of habitat contributes to a growing need for wildlife reserves.

South Africa is a big country. Many are familiar with Kruger National Park even if they have never been here. But it’s in the northeast corner of South Africa, about 1,800 kilometers or a 17-hour drive from Cape Town. How can a traveler in the southern part of the country see wildlife outside the zoos without traveling to the north?

Enter Addo National Elephant Park. It’s an only 817 kilometers and 8-hour drive away from Cape Town.

It’s easy to sign up for a tour through this park. You’ll see advertisements everywhere you go in the country. When you call or Email a tour operator, they’ll set you up with the tour that fits your budget. And they’ll connect you with lodging for your stay.

The lodging affiliate for our tour operator, Crisscross Tours, was the Christlin African Lodge. We didn’t know it at the time, but this lodge is operated by a family member related to the operator running the park tours. This relationship wasn’t disclosed to us before booking. It was only after our arrival we learned more than one tour operator conducts tours through the park and has a partnership with lodging affiliates. More on this in a bit.

The Christlin African Lodge

This is an excellent place to stay if you plan to spend time at Addo National Elephant Park. The “luxury” African Hut type lodging is terrific. They're quiet, air-tight, and feature tiled floors, large queen like size beds with adjoining living room area-like sitting spots, a large shower and bathroom and an adjoining walk-in closet-like area with a chair and table.

Wireless (Mobile or Cellular) coverage is spotty out here in the boondocks — E or EDGE mostly (slow) in the area — but 3G several hundred feet away from our lodge at the pool area. There’s also free WIFI at the pool. Yes, we know, who else but a travel journalist would worry about Internet connections for a wildlife excursion?

The restaurant on the property is excellent. It runs daily specials for dinner — meaning you either go with what they offer for the day or go elsewhere. That's because they have a small staff. But what they offer is terrific. If you want more choices off a menu, visit the Africanos restaurant about 1.5 miles nearby or the Cattle Baron on Addo National Elephant Park.

There's ample parking as the lodge offers limited units and is on a secure compound.

The Tour with Crisscross

As stated earlier, the advertisements for this place are for touring Addo National Elephant Park. There’s no disclosure of Crisscross Tours as the operator, linking that operator to the lodging operator.

Crisscross offers touring packages. In the context of the operator’s website, lodging is portrayed as an add-on benefit. This is a bit deceptive.

We're told this place is owned by two brothers. One runs the lodge and restaurant business. The other runs the Crisscross Tours business — the operation that takes you into park. That's the reason for the partnering and cross advertising.

The operators advertising practices can create some confusion for the customer and can be a bit misleading. That's because they create an impression that you can't do an Addo tour without buying the package AND booking at their preferred lodge.

THEY ARE SEPARATE AND INDEPENDENT. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BOOK BOTH. We didn’t find out about this until our arrival.

We selected the Addo Ultimate Tour package. It was terrific. And our guide, “Cool Man” (Koulemani) was excellent.

The tour starts at the Christlin Lodge, the tour operators preferred touring partner, and returns at the end of the tour. It’s a long day.

Keep in mind, these tour vehicles are like souped up, ultra-large Land Rovers, with elevated chassis and tiered seating rising from lower, in the front, to higher positions in the back of the vehicle.

This matters if you tour in the winter months, as we did. As any motorcyclist can tell you, you’ll ride 20-25 degrees cooler out in the weather at road speed.

It’s several long, cold, miles to the park from the lodge. Then, you parade around the park all-day long. The combination of the hills, road speed, time of year, and elevation all contribute to the temperature you’ll feel on the tour. In our case, it was cold.

The operator-tour guide will take you to the choice spots they know are likely to yield a sighting. Elephants, Zebra, Goshawks, Wart Hogs, Buffalo and Lions are the larger species on this park.

But watch how your tour operator, and those on self-driving tours, weave around the roads. They are avoiding the dung beetles! It’s against the law to kill these insects.

Is it worth it?

In retrospect, if we had to do it again, we wouldn't do the ADDO wildlife tours with Crisscross. We visited in the winter. And while it's generally not cold outside in this area of Africa, the temperature drops significantly when you're riding all-day long in an open-air vehicle. Addo is hilly and features strong winds. Combining wind and speed in an open-air vehicle sets up the wind effect to be about 50+ mph.

Everyone in our group “froze their butts off”. CRISSCROSS provides light blankets. But they are not enough to block out the cold.

If you're going to take an open-air tour in the winter, make sure you dress with long john type underwear upper and lower (Smart Wool is a good choice available thru REI), a buff type tube scarf, gloves, a coat with wind breaking penetration capabilities, and, dress in layers. And you'll still get cold.

Ironically, we saw couples and families driving through the park in rental cars. We would have done that had we known self-drive was an choice. That's our error. The information is available.

On a drive through, you can view the park at your own pace without being stuck with the expense and rigidity of a tour group and vehicle. And you can avoid freezing for 8 hours in the cold as we did.

Get a tall rental SUV 4WD. Even so, you’ll have to exit the car to see the wildlife. The trees are so tall, we couldn’t even see out of the tour operators vehicle sometimes.

If you go in the winter, DO NOT book a tour with anyone. Self-drive, stay warm and give yourself the flexibility to come and go from the park.

The professional tour guides stop their vehicles and talk with tourists to find out where the latest sightings of animals occur. They might know more about where the animals usually are. But they don't know the up-to-the minute sightings any more than tourists do.

Tours are to your advantage if:

1) You don't know anything at all about African wildlife and need a guide to tell you about the animals.

2) You want the advantage of riding in an open-air tour vehicle where you can sit up high and see over the scrub brush in Addo — a limited advantage.

The fact of the matter is, the scrub in ADDO is about 15 feet tall on the average (to the eye). No vehicle is tall enough to allow a visitor to see over it.

All visitors, whether in a tour vehicle or not, must wait for treeless viewing areas to see the animals. That's why driving your own rental car is to your advantage. The tour vehicles just don't offer a viewing advantage.

If you self-drive, expect park guards to search your vehicle as you enter and leave the park. Professional poachers are known to masquerade as tourists to enter the park and capture or shoot the animals. They'll be looking for guns on entry, and, animals on exit.

Update: Since this posting, a tourist was killed on a self-drive tour through a national park in South Africa. Authorities may change the rules about self-driving tours in the future.

Contact:

Chrislin African Lodge and Crisscross Tours
Bed and Breakfast
Off Valentine Road
Hermiston Farm
Addo Sundays River Valley
6105 South Africa