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It was a morning so still, so silent, so perfect that I felt embarrassed to have intruded on it by stumbling out of the tent to put the kettle on.
A quick glance around our trailer and shade tree revealed the usual birds on their morning chores. Sociable Weavers, Familiar Chats (so Familiar they cr*pped on our tent roof every morning!) a Glossy Starling grubbing for ants, a lioness sniffing the gas cylinder in the neighbour's campsite, a Yellow Billed Hornbill hopping behind me hoping for breakfast, a lioness trotting towards me, a Crimson Breasted Shrike (my favourite bird in Africa), a large male lion coming over the dune, a Kalahari Scrub Robin chasing off a rival, another male lion walking down the dune…..hang on …something's not quite normal here……
Don't Panic Mr Mainwaring; there are lions in camp, thousand of them…!!!!
It would be fair to say that Angela has never got out of a bed faster than she did that morning in Rooiputs, an unfenced camp on the Botswana side of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. We spent a hectic hour following (by car, I hasten to add) 3 lioness and 2 males around camp. One lioness was particularly inquisitive, she checked our camp area around the A frame (a shade structure which, apart from a long drop toilet, is the only thing provided by the Botswana Parks Department. Not quite true, they do provide a shower cubicle but sadly there is no water supply!)
Not finding anything of interest in our camp, the lioness headed towards the long drop toilet of another neighbouring camp, just as a man was ambling out, clearly not fully awake. The sight of the lioness seemed to perk him up a bit, though the lioness was more interested in toilet rolls than two legged breakfast (see our latest picture album!)
The pride stayed all day, sleeping under bushes on the shade side of a large dune, a perfect vantage point to watch over us. Somewhat disconcertingly we lost sight of them at sunset as they headed for the nearby waterhole.
Next day the local Gemsbok herd was no doubt wondering what had happened to Uncle George, a set of ribs lying near the waterhole and a jackal trying to pick up a detached front leg were the only indications that the lions had killed and eaten in the night.
After 8 days at Rooiputs we drove up to Nossob in the South African section of the park for a night of pure luxury, well an electrical connection and a shower! Just in case Angela thought I was spoiling her we left the next day for a 200 kilometre dune road trip to the Mabuasehube side of KTP, deeper in to Botswana and much wilder. After about 50 kilometres of an incredibly badly corrugated sand road and some high dunes I decided to make the trip a bit more exciting by getting stuck three quarters of the way up a particularly sandy, twisty and steep dune!
Of course the art of dune driving is to maintain momentum and travel light, neither of which is easy when the car is top heavy thanks to a roof rack laden with the contents of the average 3 bedroom semi and when towing a large fridge surrounded by a 1500 kilogram lump of steel on 2 wheels. So there we are, hottest part of the day (fortunately "only" 30C as it is still winter), all 4 car wheels in deep sand, the gearbox sump grounded on the centre ridge and the trailer tow bar beginning to plough the sand.
Looking on the bright side it couldn't be much worse! Oh, but it could! That's when the swarm of bees arrived to drink at the slight leak around the trailer water tank.
After two hours of frantic digging interspersed with bee wafting, I'd cleared the deeper sand from the track in front, Angela had lined it with wood and sticks gathered from the surrounding scrub (the potential presence of lions momentarily forgotten!) and we were ready to go…..about 10 feet further on….. until we were stuck again but deeper!
It couldn't get much worse could it? Oh it could, we realised that the trailer was leaning oddly to the left. After 30 minutes of sand swimming I ascertained that our left side leaf springs had sheared off and that the remains had wedged on the chassis. At moments like this the 4x4 experts recommend taking a short walk, sitting under a tree and having a smoke or drink. Being British we opted for the more mature reaction, sobbing, blaming each other, thumping the sand and putting on the giant plastic pants!
Somewhere in that process I decided to do what I should have done 3 hours previously, reverse down the dune as far as possible and drive back up faster than Lewis Hamilton on the starting grid. The fact that this might dislodge the broken leaf and rip out the axle, or flip the car and/or the trailer was forgotten as car and trailer crested the dune intact!
We drove in to our overnight campsite at dusk, too exhausted to eat or drink that evening, a first for us! The whooping call of a hyaena, followed by the unmistakeable roar of a lion lulled us in to deep sleep.
It never ceases to amaze me that a cup of tea can have such recuperative powers. As we sipped our hot drinks at sunrise the next morning the trailer didn't seem to be leaning at such a worrying angle. Instead of the previous day's conversation about leaving the park and going straight to the nearest town for urgent repairs, we concluded that we would see how the trailer held up in the park, minimise the amount of miles we had to tow it by changing campsites and carrying on with our planned 9 days in Mabuasehube.
If you look at the photos of the lioness with two small cubs and another photo of a lioness carrying a tiny cub you will understand why we were very pleased we didn't retreat from the park for repairs. As it turned out we had a fantastic time in beautiful, quiet wilderness camps.
The game sightings were not prolific but the quality was incredible. Asides from the encounters with lions and cubs, we were very privileged to have two mating leopards in our Leshloago (means Place of Death!!) Pan campsite one night. Not that we saw them! After hearing two sets of very loud, guttural growling followed by purring about 30 feet from our campfire we (yet again) beat a hasty retreat to the Landrover. Sweeps with the spotlight failed to pick them up but the next door the spoor and scat confirmed that leopards had been very close to us (and each other!)
The trip out of Mabuasehube to Gaborone took 11 hours as we towed the damaged trailer as carefully as possible through yet more deep sand until we reached gravel then finally tarmac. I never thought I would be so relieved to see a tarmac road!
In Gaborone our friends Dian and Elzana soon had us and our trailer sorted out whilst we struggled with the concept of traffic, roundabouts and robots (traffic lights). The capital city of Botswana is small (about 200,000 residents) but busy and full of customised Range Rovers and Mercedes, and, in one Mall parking lot, an Aston Martin DB9 Vantage. The contrast with the rest of Botswana, with the villages of mud and straw huts, women laden with firewood, roadside hobbled donkeys and subsistence farming could not be starker!
Anyway, we've decided to leave the trailer behind for our next trip, north to the Caprivi Strip in Namibia, then north again to Zambia and Malawi. We've nearly completed the impossible task of condensing our gear and packing it in to the Landrover. The rear seats will be staying with the trailer, we now have our 70-litre trailer fridge strapped in their place, attached to a spare battery to avoid running down the car battery!
In Caprivi we should be meeting up with Simon and Lyn from Cape Town, and Jerry & Lisa from the UK…..if we can find each other in the vastness of Namibia!
Many many thanks to Dian & Elzana for the use of their lovely house, for the lovely (non braai) food, for sourcing the trailer springs and numerous other items you need after a bush trip, for the WiFi, for working on the car and trailer with us. Thanks to Clyde for risking life and limb under a precariously propped trailer to replace the springs, and for the advice about fridge electrics, multimeters, engine valves etc etc.
Belated thanks to Jerry & Lisa for sharing their campsite with us at Nossob, see you in Caprivi hopefully.
Final thanks to all of you contacting us via the website or by email, thanks for keeping in touch.
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