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Nossob Eco Trail 2-5 October 2006
You may recall from previous postcards that we returned from Namibia to Upington to join our US friends Kevin, Katie, Jennifer and Jamie on the Nossob 4x4 Eco Trail in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and then go over the border in to Botswana.
We had completed the Nossob trail and were at Nossob Camp preparing for the Botswana leg when we got a radio message regarding my mother’s poorly condition. Sadly we were unable to get further than Upington on the journey home before Mum died.
You will appreciate that the eco trail is not the uppermost memory in my mind at the moment but it was a fantastic trip, largely thanks to the company of our US friends and Jan Kriel, our South African National Parks ranger.
The trip had everything, stunning scenery, exhilaration as we hurled the Discovery up and over 60 foot high sand dunes and tension as we encountered wildlife with teeth, in the shape of a lioness drinking at the waterhole adjacent to our first campsite (no fences).
Jan stoked up the atmosphere round the campfire on that first night by insisting that lions are not deterred by fire and by reminding Angela and I that we were the only couple sleeping on the ground. The cold wind that blew that evening kept us awake and forced the lioness (joined earlier by her two cubs) to seek shelter elsewhere thankfully.
Jan proved to be a mine of information on everything from the bushes and trees and their uses by the Bushmen, to the incredible star map in the sky above us each night, to the history of the park and through to the identification of the most mundane LBJs (little brown jobs, as in birds).
As you would expect from any ranger worth their salt, Jan had a never ending repertoire of stories of close encounters with dangerous animals, but oozed authority and safety as he guided us and our vehicles over the 3 nights and 4 days of the trip.
One advantage of having 3 biologists on the trip was that everything, from the smallest beetle to the largest tree, was a source of interesting questions, facts and theories. Jan stopped throughout the 5 or 6 hours of dune driving each day to point out the flora and fauna. I was relieved to learn that large and venomous cape cobras are scared of humans and disappear down burrows as soon as we approached on foot.
Our vehicles came through the trip unscathed (at the time) though the sides of the Discovery were scoured by the thorny vegetation. We averaged about 15 kilometres an hour and did the whole trip (some 200 kms) in low box to minimise the damage to the vegetation.
Our friends had hired a Landrover Defender 110, and packed it (and unpacked it each day) with an efficiency that would be the envy of the US marine corp. The vehicle behaved though it’s tendency to wallow due to the sand and the sheer mass crammed in and on top of it, resulted in the unflattering nickname “the hippo”.
By the way, the Shepherd's tree in the photo accompanying this postcard is so named because shepherds could always be found sheltering under it. The reason they shelter under this species of tree is that the soil temp under the tree is around 28C when the unshaded soil temp reaches up to 47C.
It is impossible to convey in this postcard the sheer beauty and solitude of the desert landscape of the Kgalagadi Park, we love the place and will be going back.
The Botswana side of the park will be an adventure for another date. Kevin, Katie, Jamie and Jennifer completed it when we left them to return to Upington, despite the usual requirement to have a minimum of 2 vehicles.
I'd like to end this postcard by thanking Kevin, Katie, Jamie and Jennifer for making the Nossob trail special, and for their kind support when we had to leave them abruptly. Good luck, Kevin, with the new job at the university in St Louis, Missouri.
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