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Monate Campsite Upington
Thanks to a superb service from Magda, Marius and the team at North West Ford & Mazda we now have a fully repaired Discovery, with a new drive shaft joint, back door lock and new oil seals.
We’ve decided to return to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park for 8 nights to see some animals before departing for the Cape area, and to give the vehicle a good workout.
In the meantime we have had a relaxing time at Monate campsite, 12 km north of Upington. The pool here is a necessity as the temperature hits 40C and it is too hot to bother wafting the flies away. Thirty to forty lengths keeps Angela fit and then we have a dip in the pool!
We’ve spent most of the time here with no other campers so it has been blissfully peaceful apart from some awe-inspiring thunderstorms. We’ve been kept company by the wildlife, loads of birds during the day then scrub hares, mongoose, striped polecat (our first sighting) and an over friendly domesticated Duiker (antelope) at dusk. The ah bambi feeling on seeing the duiker soon turned to annoyance as it tries to get in the tent, using its hooves on the canvas at around 2am each night. It now gets a squirt from the water pistol if it comes near.
The adjoining farm has a herd of Brahmin bulls and bullocks who make an appearance every couple of days in their search for good grazing, the noise of them mooing as they approach is uncomfortably close to the communication calls of lions!!!
Monate is a bit of a wildlife orphanage. The owners have a farm and as a consequence there are always springbok calves and lambs roaming around. Add to that 2 resident tortoises, various springbok, three dogs, half a dozen peacocks and a flock of guinea fowl and you begin to feel like Dr Doolittle.
The star of the show however, was a young male meerkat we named Marvin. I’m in the past tense because Marvin disappeared from Monate when we were back in the UK and is sadly missed. He loved to come round our camp and would rummage through the tent and Landrover if we let him. He didn’t mind being picked up and loved being stroked. It was great to observe a meerkat at such close quarters, in the park you usually see them running away in the distance. The owners have no idea what happened to him, road kill, raptor prey or meerknapped. I’d like to think that as a young male he went off to follow his loins!
Hopefully the Kgalagadi Park will be free of ticks. The grass here at Monate is watered daily and the ticks thrive. I pulled one off my knee the other night but not before it had dinner. The itching makes you long for the pain free joy of mosquitoes!
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