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42 Days in the Desert
(Microsoft spell checker does have its uses; this blog may otherwise have been titled "42 days in the Dessert)
It was probably inevitable after nearly two and a half years touring Southern Africa that Angela and I would eventually have a nightmare encounter.
Charging lions, aggressive baboons, over inquisitive elephants, scorpions under our feet, deadly snakes rearing in front of us, our friend Lesley's wet swimwear, the car stuck in mud, the trailer axle snapping and tyre blowouts have come and gone. None of these experiences prepared us for the sight that greeted us as we walked in to the pool area at Nossob restcamp in the Kgalagadi (Kalahari) Transfrontier Park one afternoon last week.
A middle aged German (yes it's those Germans again!) male was cooling down in the deep end. Clearly horrified by the unexpected presence of a lady (I mean Angela, in case some of you were thinking someone else was with me) the gentleman gallantly strolled up the pool steps to…….. retrieve his swimming trunks!
What struck me, apart from the fact that it looked as though the pool water was colder than I thought, was the size of the man's Boep, a lovely expressive Afrikaans word for what in Britain we rather unimaginatively call a beer gut. Despite the unyielding pull of gravity the Boep sadly did not hang low enough to spare us the sight of the man's Piel (that's two Afrikaans words we know now, not quite enough for a polite conversation yet!)
Perhaps even more worrying from Angela's perspective was that she didn't even notice he was naked until he bent over to clothe his modesty, it then dawned on her that the full moon had actually occurred last week.
Camping for 42 days in the Kgalagadi, at Nossob, Twee Rivirien and Mata Mata restcamps, is a marvellous way to relax, despite nude Germans. Whilst the game viewing was harder than the same time last year, largely due to prolific rains producing lush and tall grass, we had some awesome spectacles.
A cheetah and her full grown cub went for a wildebeest calf 50 metres from our car, the mother cheetah missed but the cub managed to get a paw on the calf, only to have the mother wildebeest attack it. The calf got away, and in a touching scene we've not noticed in wildebeest before, the whole herd gathered around and checked it out. Perhaps they were just admiring the new blood red racing stripes on the calf's backside!
Leopards are always a difficult animal to see so it was a rare privilege to watch a cub, obviously ignoring mother's advice to stay put whilst she hunted, creep down from the limestone cliffs near Twee Rivirien and, in front of our car, start hunting Springbok. The Springbok, despite being twice the size of the cub, paid the predator the respect it deserved by issuing their wheezing alarm call and keeping a sensible distance.
Perhaps our best wildlife event of the trip was to finally spot a Brown Hyaena, a far more elusive animal than it's more famous spotted cousin, which itself is also a far more difficult animal to see than you might expect from years of watching BBC wildlife documentaries. The Brown Hyaena is beautiful (to me anyway) and looks like a cross between a German Shepherd, a wolf and a porcupine, with a bad hair day thrown in.
Having broken our duck on Brown Hyaena we saw them several times, including drinking at the Mata Mata restcamp waterhole one evening whilst we stood at the fence. This waterhole proved unusually rewarding, we also watched a mother cheetah (radio collared) and near full-grown cub drink, the same pair that had tried to reduce the wildebeest gene pool.
This park is not just about the predators though, it is world famous for the variety of raptors that live or migrate through the park. Brought up in the UK, where the sight of a Buzzard or Red Kite soaring way above the motorway is exciting, it takes time to get used to seeing eagles in every other tree and watching over 15 Lanner falcons drinking at a single waterhole.
The best interaction we saw amongst raptors was when a Tawny eagle flew after a Lanner falcon and forced it to drop the Agama lizard it had caught. The Tawny landed to pick up the lizard, only to be buzzed three times by the irate Lanner. Unmoved by the Lanner's action the Tawny started to eat the lizard, only to be mobbed by two resident Pale Chanting Goshawks, clearly unhappy about the presence of this large eagle in their patch of the Kalahari.
We were told a story here about a famous old timer who has researched and written extensively about the flora and fauna of the park. The man, now 80, arrives with a battered old caravan and parks it in a wilderness camp in the north of the park. He brings 30 pairs of underpants and changes to a new pair every day. When his clean underpants pile disappears he knows it is the day to leave. On a recent visit he was amazed to see Parks staff arrive at the camp to check on his welfare. It appears he had inadvertently packed 31 pairs of pants!
Like the old man, Angela and I never wear watches, our equivalent of the pants (and let's face it our off road trailer does not have the storage capacity for 30 pairs of Angela's bloomers!) is bottles of wine. When our 32nd and final bottle of wine dropped in to the jackal dinner receptacle, we were forced to make a critical decision. Did we leave the park or did we risk everything by resorting to the emergency alcohol supply, a 3-litre box of infamous Namaqua Blanc De Blanc?
I've probably mentioned this wine before; it comes from an area where the sun is merciless, where the locals put on sweaters if the temperature drops below 42C and where the essence of "terroir" (that unknown soil and environmental magic that the French claim makes wine distinctive) comes from liberal piles of sheep s***.
As the game viewing was excellent it was a "no brainer", we opened the wine! The decision to stay was a good one, we saw several attempts by lions to pull down wildebeest but we are still waiting to see them make a successful kill, despite two and a half years of watching!
Yet again the weather proved as fascinating as the wildlife. In January we sweltered in temperatures that reached 46C, the thermometer in the tent went off the scale at 50C. In early February the heat relented and the thunderstorms arrived, the tent groundsheet was underwater three times in what can only be described as biblical floods! As we drove south to Twee Rivirien on our last day the Auob River was flowing (very rare) and the road was flowing as well!
During our 42 days in the park we've met a great collection of people and some hellos and thanks are due. Hello to Sonja and Josef from Switzerland, good luck with the solar panels and thanks for the Namibia camping info.
Thanks to Thomas and Rachelle for the wine and the sharing of the braais, hope the Jeep is repaired now (see it is not just Landrovers that break down in wilderness areas).
Thanks to Janus and Leizel from Nelspruit for the very generous gift of bottled water that allowed us to stay on another 10 days in the park. In case the reader (yep that's me, I'm the only one that ever reads these blogs) is wondering why we didn't drink tap water or at the very least boil tap water, the Kgalagadi boreholes are notoriously salty.
Thanks to Craig and Lynn for the grapefruits, we were beginning to get signs of scurvy. (This is terrible, it reads like we spent all our time begging for food and drink!)
Thanks to Andre and Erna, also from Nelspruit, for sharing our car on game drives when it was a bit wet for your moffie car to cope. It saved me having to talk to Angela! Thanks also for the bird song tracks.
Thanks to Alan and Jonelle for info on what is happening behind the scenes in the Park, we will try and load a trip report on the SANP web forum. Thanks to Dian and Elzana for the Mabua advice and for putting us up in Gaborone (when we visit).
Thanks to Stuart and Trudi for the positive view of the Discovery 3 (finally Landrover have a car that can help recover their battered reputation in South Africa) and for sharing all the sightings information.
Good luck to Karel and Hildy who we met briefly in Mata Mata as they headed to the Fish River canyon in Namibian, part of a long journey north up Africa and eventually to the UK. Let us know how it goes.
Hello to Thomas and Barbara. Thomas recently had one of those wildlife experiences rangers talk about round the campfire!
Thomas was sitting on the toilet (a wooden structure with no door!) at Rooiputs campsite on the Botswana side of the Kgalagadi Park when he heard sniffing. In the gap between the floor and the flimsy wooden posts that protect nothing but your modesty he could see four furry yellow legs. Craning his neck around the wooden wall he realised he was eyeing up a lioness, just 3 metres away!
Showing remarkable coolness considering he was caught literally with his pants down, he shouted as loud as he could! The lioness got the fright of her life and eventually retreated 100 metres, whilst Thomas recovered his dignity (and everything else) and jumped in the their car. We have a photo of Thomas and Barbara on the latest album, sat in their Kea rental motorhome watching lions mating. They obviously have an affinity for lions!
Finally and not least (even though they are Australians) hello to Benny and Crystal. Having seen loads of wildlife photography fanatics driving around the Park with lenses the size of deep space telescopes I was beginning to think that size really did matter and that 300mms was just not enough.
Whilst parked at a waterhole next to these aspiring Poms, Benny produced, without embarrassment, the tiniest point and shoot camera ever built and proceeded to take pictures of some indeterminate animal dots in the distance. For that selfless act I will be cheering Australia in the Test series against South Africa….well maybe not!
I started this blog by talking about the frightening sight of a naked German; I'll finish by mentioning a very annoying sight. At Dalkeith waterhole, south of Mata Mata restcamp, we came across a couple who had not only got out of their vehicle, (illegal and dangerous) they were sitting there cooking breakfast on a portable gas stove.
As if that was not enough to ruin the game viewing experience for the rest of us (they were 20 metres from the waterhole) they had very thoughtfully strung up a washing line from their car to a tree and were drying a bright red duvet and assorted towels!
It was a real pity that the pride of two large male lions, 3 lionesses and 3 cubs that were on the dune above the waterhole the previous afternoon had not stayed on for the easiest meal they'd ever find! We reported this event to the Park authorities and discovered the nationality of the offending couple…….you'd never guess!
Next stop, a 50th birthday party for our friend Isaac, in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana.
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