Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park Safari - Episode 2

We arrived at Augrabies at about 4pm and Attie phoned Johan to see where they were, expecting a long wait. To our surprise though, they were literally five minutes behind us, just turning off the main road we’d just come off.


Once we were all checked in through the gate, we did some quick introductions and moved off to reception to check in and get the camp set up. John’s team were having a chalet for the night so they didn’t have much to do.


After setting up camp, we all went down to the waterfalls to see how much water was crashing over the rocks, but it was a little disappointing having seen some photographs taken a few weeks earlier of some major flooding. It was still awesome to see the falls again though.

After the walk, we sat down at the pub veranda and had a quick drink to “break the ice”. Later in the evening, we went round to the chalet for a braai and a few drinks, and a very pleasant evening.

The night wasn’t too cold, but maybe we’re just getting used to the chilly evenings and are dressing properly for them.

I’ve woken before dawn on every morning of the trip so far, usually by birds chirping or, in this case, the water crashing over the falls, which are about 300m from the tent. It’s 11oC in the tent but it’s probably the chill factor from the water that makes it this cold. A quick cup of coffee and we start packing up…again. The other three go to catch the morning sun on the waterfalls but I finish packing the car and then go for a warm shower.


Just outside Keimoes, we stop at a little place called “Die Pienk Padstal” (The Pink Road Stall) for Steph to have a look around, and to buy some more biltong. I’m sure the residents of Keimoes must be embarrassed by the place, as it is garishly colourful compared to the rest of the town which is adorned with more rational colours.


By 10am we are at Augrabies reception, as planned, to drive up to where we are as I write this, the Twee Rivieren camp in the KNTP. We have to drive through Upington and we meet up with the others after buying a little more meat…just in case we run out. We had planned our meals down to what we were going to eat each night, but a little extra would not be wasted. We had arranged to meet at the statue of a donkey (a proper one this time) and, after driving up and down the main street looking for a big-ass statue (pun intended), we phone Attie to find out where he is. Turns out, the statue is off the main road, two blocks away and the damn thing is only four feet high, made of bronze. I never would have found it on my own, so thank fuck for cell phones, for a change.

The drive to Twee Rivieren is monotonous, and there is 255km of monotony. It used to be a nice road to travel before it was tarred, as you literally drove on the red sand dunes, making the drive feel like you were riding a boat over waves. Now, it’s b..o..r..i..n..g… Some things are better left unchanged. The upgraded road may also have had something to do with the deterioration of the roads within the park, now that non-4x4 vehicles have easy access to the park. Two wheel drive vehicles and the over-inflation of their wheels ensure that the road becomes corrugated and it is terrible to drive on, like an old washboard. I say all non-4x4 vehicles should be banned from the park as this would go a long way to keeping the roads in good condition. Driving in four-wheel drive mode ensures that you don’t spin the wheels, a major contribution to the corrugation of the roads.

Check-in on the South African side of the park is a breeze. Literally, it takes us fifteen minutes to register all three vehicles and seven people.

Then we have to register at the Botswana side because we’re spending seven nights in their half of the park. What a fuck up…should have been expected though. Some guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing, looks at all the documentation like he knows what he’s doing, then calls over a woman and mutters something in Tswana. She then takes over and again looks over all the papers, asks Attie for 6,000 Pula (Botswana currency), to which Attie produces an officially posted and stamped receipt for the exact amount. This just about puts her nose out of joint because he’s stolen her thunder and makes her look less clever than her not-so-intelligent counterpart, who is following her every movement. She takes the receipt and goes off to phone someone to confirm the payment. Meanwhile, the counterpart comes back for another look at the papers we’ve just filled in and smiles at us. She comes back, we fill in the Vehicle Register and get shown to another desk to fill in another book. This guy smiles at us, speaks in pretty good English, but all the while lets us know in no uncertain terms, that we’re going onto his turf.

Total time spent at the Botswana side: 45 minutes!!

The difference between the two sides? SA has computers and people who know what they’re doing. Botswana has books and people who have attitude problems…idiots.

Smiley asks us to come around with the vehicles but we don’t know why and cannot find a way round the building, so we ignore him and go to set up our camp. Smiley and the woman come looking for us about a half hour later and give us a paper, which we have supposedly forgotten. There are smiles all round, we say thanks and they go on their merry way…idiots.

The first beer of the afternoon, after setting up camp, is always an occasion and we all sit down and enjoy a cold one. That ZAR5,300 fridge is already worth every investment cent for those cold beers.


We can only get two stands next to each other in Twee Rivieren, so Johan takes one closer to the ablution block while we take two next to the road. I know we’re going to get woken early because all the “race car drivers” queue up early to see who can get out the gate first at 07h00 when it opens into the reserve proper. It doesn’t matter as we want to get up reasonable early to go for a game drive ourselves.


The only notable sighting was one we made of a leopard, walking along a cliff and marking its territory with the occasional squirt of urine. We got some video footage on my DVD camera, but did not take any photos of the beautiful beast.


The park used to be called the Kalahari Gemsbok Park and, IMO, should have retained its old name due to the abundance of the beast it was originally named after, the Gemsbok. They are magnificent antelopes, with beautiful shades of black, grey and white making up their markings. In this park, they are as plentiful as the Impala in the Kruger National Park.


We also see plenty of these little creatures, the Black-backed Jackal. They are like little dogs and, compared to previous animals of the same species, seem to have become tamer and are less afraid of vehicles and people. Perhaps they relate people and cars to food scraps.

We have a great first evening in the park, a braai, a couple of beers, a couple of Captain Morgan’s, and some good chat among people who, after only two nights together, are fast becoming good friends.

To explain the people, other than Steph and I, goes as follows: Attie is married to Rea, who has known Anna since she was nine years old. Anna is the sister of Johan, who is married to Mariet. They have all known each other for many years. Anna lives in Simonstown, just down the road from us, while Johan and Mariet live in Richards Bay and are retired, while Anna runs a Tibetan Tea House in Simonstown. Rea and Anna went to Tibet a few years ago together. Johan and Mariet have just sold their house in Richards Bay and are moving to Simonstown in the next couple of months.

L to R: Steven, Steph, Rea, Attie, Mariet, Anna, Johan

The main thing is, they are all really nice people and we all get on well, so it looks like we’ve made more friends, which is good for us, as we’ll probably, end up going camping together more often.

At the end of the evening, we all retire to our tents for another cool night, but we know what to expect by now.

True to form, we’re woken by the first “race car driver” taking his place on the line at 06h30 so I get up and put on the coffee pot, which has become my chore while Steph gets herself pretty for the day ahead.

At 07h00 the race into the reserve begins and there must have been about a dozen cars that left shortly after the gates opened. We have our coffee, get our cameras and snacks ready, then head into the veld as well.

There’s not much to see, no cats, but plenty of what the park is famous for, Gemsbok. Magnificent beasts, easily six feet in height excluding the ramrod-straight horns, which must be another four feet as well, with the most amazing black, white and grey colouring.


We see a few animals such as ostrich (yes, I know it’s a bird), giraffes, Red Hartbees (also known as a Topi), some ground squirrels, yellow mongoose, springbok, wildebeest (black and blue), and a bunch of birds including a hunting Pale Chanting Goshawk, which walks along the ground flushing mice and lizards out of their hiding places.


We have a pit stop at a siding and a leg stretch, and then head back to camp for a chilled day. On the way back, Steph drives and we come across a black-backed jackal on the prowl. I take some photos and Johan moves in front of us to take a turn. At that point, the jackal walks across the road between the two cars, stops, looks at them and us, then moves off into the bush…and I get it all on DVD. The light is perfect and the bright blue sky against the brown road and white Pajero, makes the video perfect. I’m well chuffed and show it to everyone when we get back to camp. Anna wants a copy.

We laze around for the rest of the day, do some laundry and I catch up on this journal to this point.


We have an early start in the morning as we have a long drive ahead because we could not get a booking at the next camp and have to move into the Botswana side where there are going to be absolutely no facilities other than what we have with us, for three days. It promises to be interesting as there are no formal camps. I overheard a guy at Reception asking the Botswana lady if there were facilities at Motopi and she had said, “No, it is just a tree”.

That “tree” is our first night’s stop on the Botswana side of the park.

Attie has just finished looking at the maps, deciding on our route and speed, and we’re about to have a briefing, then an early braai and then pack most of the stuff so that we can be the first “race car” in line on Saturday morning. “Gentlemen, start your engines…”

Sunday 9th May (Happy Mothers Day)

We get woken, fifteen minutes before my alarm goes off, by Anna trying to get everyone up. Thanks for that, Anna…

I get the coffee on and we start dismantling the tent. Most of the other stuff had been packed away the previous night to save time.

We had planned to leave at 07h00 when the gates opened, to cover the 270km to Motopi Camp, in as little time as possible. The last 100km was going to be done with half the normal tyre pressure because of the sandy terrain.

The road to Nossob camp, our turning point into Botswana, was like driving over a washboard, corrugated to hell. The only real highlight of the route was the leopard sighting that I managed to get on DVD even though I battled to reverse the car and film him at the same time. Steph really has to learn to use the various cameras we have so that I can focus on getting the car into position for the best shots. Then we’d both be happier and less stressed with each other than we can be at times.

When we turned off the main road, we stopped to deflate the tyres to 1.2bar and carried on into the dunes. The first kilometre or so was a lot of uphill as we moved onto a higher plateau. This is into real 4x4 country and it’s great to put the Mazda-rati (and myself) to the test. Trying to stay at 30km/h is not easy on the corrugations but we are going to take about four hours to cover the 100km to Motopi Camp.

There is almost no animal life in this part of the world except for the “usual suspects”, but we try and find something interesting anyway.

We get to Motopi Camp 1 and it is already occupied by people, but we are booked into Motopi 2, a further 10km through the bush.


We arrive at camp sometime around 5pm and get the living quarters sorted out before dark. Food tonight is a stir-fry and the smell of cooking has brought us some visitors…hyenas. I heard twigs breaking as they crept closer and I am immediately at full alert because I don’t trust them at all. They have the most powerful jaws in the entire animal kingdom and must be respected. These beasts are also not pure scavenger, they will hunt and kill if they are hungry enough or if they sense a weakness they can exploit. In larger numbers, they have also been known to steal a fresh kill from a pride of lions.

Our women, however, think they are cute and that the situation is fun, and start moving closer to the beasts, talking to the hyenas all the time. They, however, have only one thing in mind…our dinner, or at least, something to eat. At one point we are less than 10m from the animals and Attie and I are trying to get people to see reason, that these are hungry wild animals.

There are three hyenas that we can see but, at one point, a female makes a growling noise and we hear a softer bark in return from within the bush, perhaps a pup or two. The hyenas move back into the bush for a while but reappear to our right and come around the back of us, looking for a gap, again to within 10m.

We end up guzzling our food so that we can get the camp and, more importantly, the food squared away for the night. Once this is done, we cram as much as we can into the vehicles so that there is no further temptation for the night predators to come back.


We also get some light rain, which puts a slight damper on discussions, but as quickly as it starts, the rain is over and we bring our chairs out again and sit around the campfire.

By now the hyenas are gone but I don’t think they went too far, probably just out of visual range then waited until we went to bed as we find paw prints through the camp when we get up the following morning.

Before we go to bed though, we sit under the stars for a bit, talking, and then hit the sack at about 10pm. For once, I sleep through and wake at around 6am, with the rest of the gang not far behind me.

Breakfast is a quick coffee’n’rusk affair as we want to try and catch some game in the open before it gets too hot and they retire to the protection of the trees. We drive around a couple of dry “pans” (waterholes) but there is only a few buck to be seen.

The drive to our next camp, Mpayathutlwa, is unexciting with very few sightings, only the “usuals”. We drive past a camp called Bosobogolo, but because there are no animals to be seen, I rename the camp “Bos-o-buggerall-o”.


The Mazda-rati’s air conditioner cannot keep up with the ambient heat and by 2pm is blowing hot air and it is cooler in the black car to wind the window down and feel the breeze blowing through the cab.


Mpayathutlwa is a nice camp with a wooden lean-to for sheltering camping tables, and ourselves, from the afternoon heat.


Episode 3 coming tomorrow...