I am sitting on the third floor of my father's house, looking out on a grey, drizzly day; the clouds are obscuring the usual view of the Sleeping Giant peninsula out across the waters of Lake Superior. Not an inspiring day to go outside, so it's an ideal day to write and catch up on the next few weeks of Stanley's Travels, in South Africa back in January.
When we entered South Africa from Swaziland on the afternoon of Friday, December 30, we had a basic plan for our swing through the country. Despite buying the car in South Africa and spending over a month there, we had barely scratched the surface of this huge, diverse country. We had spent a frustrating week vehicle-hunting in Cape Town, a couple of weeks in Kruger, and another frustrating couple of weeks in and around Sabie as we waited for repairs to Stanley. Later we spent some time in and around Upington, and then camped near Delmas at the Blinkgat workshop, but the entire southern three quarters of the country was an unknown quantity to us.
Our idea for this leg was to make our way south along the Kwa-Zulu coast, stopping to see wildlife in Imfolozi, to hike in the Drakensberg and in Lesotho, and then to take our time along the Wild Coast and Garden Route, and then past Cape Agulhas to Cape Town. We would then finally turn north along the coast towards the Fish River Canyon and finally get to Namibia in time to catch a flight back to Johannesburg to do a week's worth of tour guiding in Kruger in the middle of February. It seemed like a good way to maximize our exposure to the various biomes and mammal and bird species of South Africa.
We ate sumptuously well and then joined Saul and Mandy (a medical/physiotherapy couple from Durban) at their roaring campfire with glasses of whisky to toast out the old year. By 10:30, sadly, we were so sleepy that we gave up on seeing midnight and headed to bed, sated and happy.
New Year's Day was a lazy day spent in camp, having an outsized breakfast, catching up on laundry (the heat was resulting in a lot of sweaty clothes and bedding) and then walking around the property in search of birds. It was a pleasant property to walk around, with lots of impala and birds, while across the fence we saw red duiker and strange all-black impala being bred on a game farm. We lolled in the pool to beat the worst of the afternoon heat, and then went for a bicycle ride down the dirt road outside the lodge. We didn't get very far, but it felt good to do some exercise after days of eating and driving. We ate copious quantities of leftovers and packed up, ready for a timely departure the next morning.
January 2nd saw us staggering out of bed at 5:20 for an early-morning game drive. By 6 am we were packed up and underway, headed this time to the nearby gate of Hluhluwe. It proved to be even hillier and prettier than the Imfolozi sector of the park, and once again we saw plenty of white rhinos on the way into the park. There were many buffalo wallowing in the marshy areas near the rivers, along with plenty of zebras and a lone elephant. We drove to a riverside picnic spot and there cooked up a lavish bacon-and-eggs feast. We were slowly learning the South African style of game driving: get up, grab a quick bite of rusks and coffee or tea, spend a couple of hours in the prime game-viewing opportunities just after dawn, then retire to a picnic spot for a big brunch. We sat overlooking a river, but although we could hear hippos they weren't in our field of view, although we had some wooly-necked storks as compensation.
After brunch we continued along the park, past more big buffalo herds, one with a few huge rhinos mixed in as they all wallowed contentedly in the mud of a waterhole. We exited the park via a skyline drive that didn't give much game but provided stellar views out over the green hills of KwaZulu-Natal. It was a very pleasant park, and we were glad that we made time for it.
By 10:30 we were underway, heading down the highway to Richards Bay, then heading inland after a grocery store run. There was a great variety of landscape as we climbed past forestry plantations to grassy plateaus dotted with Zulu villages. We were headed into the blood-soaked Battlefields area of KZN, where the three biggest players in South African history (the Zulus, the Boers and the British) took turns fighting each other in all possible combinations, and our first stop was Isandlwana, a name that resonates with anyone familiar with British military history.
We walked down to the battlefield itself, where life-sized bronze replicas of the Voortrekkers' 64 ox-drawn wagons, drawn up into a circular defensive position as was the case during the battle, have marked the spot since 1972. The Afrikaners put defensive barriers between the wagons, drew their cattle and people inside the circle and kept up a murderous fusillade with their rifles until they had killed 3000 or more Zulus, who eventually broke off their attack, leaving the Afrikaners in possession of the area.
Across the dry riverbed, the South African government has recently erected its own museum, which tells the story from the point of view of the Zulus, whose lands the Afrikaners were overrunning in 1838. We almost didn't get in; the place seemed to be locked, and nobody was around, even though it was long after the posted opening times. We had had a scout around the grounds, already looking disheveled and poorly maintained despite it being only four years old, and were on our way back across the pedestrian Bridge of Reconciliation (with locked gates on either side and razor wire guarding the sides; there has to be some sort of metaphor there for the actual state of reconciliation in South Africa) when a museum employee, who looked as though he had just woken up from a nap, came running over to get us. We looked around briefly, but we were in a hurry to get our fridge fixed, so I am afraid we gave the government museum short shrift.
The entire place is really a microcosm of South Africa's divisions and different views of history and the future; the Afrikaner family running the museum were quite bitter about relations with their Zulu neighbours, complaining of cut fences, cattle encroachment and theft. The Afrikaner museum makes much of the feeling of being besieged, of standing alone against a hostile world, that played such a big role in apartheid, and the fact that they don't own the uncontested narrative of the battle seemed to eat at the soul of the man at the cashier's till. The fact that there are two competing museums for the same site also speaks of a country that hasn't decided how it feels about its recent past.
We drove off around 10 am and within an hour we were in Dundee, a small provincial town, at D&G Electric, unloading the fridge. We dropped it off for them to look at overnight and went to the surprisingly good campsite in town, Kwa-Rie, located in an old quarry (hence the name) and full of birds and flowers. We set up camp and Terri roasted a succulent leg of lamb before a huge rainstorm rolled in. We sat under our awning after supper reading and (in my case) playing guitar for the first time since before Madagascar, which felt very good indeed.
We continued on our way in a steadily increasing downpour, headed for the Royal Natal Park in the northern Drakensberg for a few days of hiking. We arrived and shoehorned ourselves into a powered site (power obtained by a long extension cord from the ablution block). We lounged under the shelter of the awning, reading and getting hungry as the smells of baking scones and leftover lentil stew tormented our nostrils and wondering if we really wanted to spend the next month in the rain. We thought not.
Mountain Scenery Between the Rainstorms
It was an unexpectedly spectacular drive, past the huge Sterkfonteyn Reservoir and through the
Golden Gate Highlands National Park, where we spotted, for the first and only time, the
black (or white-tailed) wildebeest, a fairly uncommon species found only in these highlands. We would have loved to have stopped and hiked and explored the park, but the rainclouds were gathering and we had kilometres to make. We stopped in a tiny town, Clarens, that seems to be a counter-cultural hippie hangout in the Orange Free State highlands, to buy groceries, including a 5-kilogram bag of brown flour that would last Terri the rest of the trip. We then drove to
Meiringskloof, an oasis of loveliness nestled in a small box canyon (a "kloof", in Afrikaans), checked into our little cottage and prepared to wait out the storm.
It started to rain properly that evening, and kept going for the next 36 hours. It would have been miserable to have been trapped inside Stanley and under our awning for that long, so we were glad that we had sprung for indoor accommodation. It was a fairly large, comfortable, older cottage that had everything we needed: electric power, a refrigerator, a fully-equipped kitchen, a big bed and a roof that didn't leak. It was nice to cocoon ourselves indoors, read, write a Madagascar blog post, eat well (Terri baked another big loaf of bread), have a haircut (Terri is getting really good at handling my curls) and to sit beside our indoor fireplace in the evening keeping warm. As it turned out, we were feeling the effects of a cyclone blowing in from the Indian Ocean, and there was a lot of rain. During our enforced day off we checked the weather a few times and came to a decision. We had a 36-hour window of clear weather coming up during which we would drive across Lesotho, and then lots more rain after that. It was time to pull the plug on this side of South Africa, skip much of the coast and head north towards the Kalahari and then Namibia. It was just too rainy to make it worth our while to go to the Wild Coast or the Garden Route areas.
The next morning, Sunday, January 8th, we awoke to blue skies and lingered over our departure, first using wi-fi and then walking briefly around the lovely nature reserve that we had barely seen through the driving rain. It was full of birds, and I thought I had heard galagos the night before, and it would be a great place to stay in good weather as well, with some nice hiking and dense forest to explore. At last at 11:30 we pulled ourselves away and headed the short distance to the Lesotho border.
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| High up at AfriSki, Lesotho |
It was a very quick and straightforward process to enter the country, and soon we were in the first town in Lesotho, the truly dismal Butha-Buthe. No shops were open on a Sunday, and the town had an edgy seediness to it that didn't fill us with any desire to linger, so we drove on quickly along the A1. We weren't sure what we were going to get in terms of roads: once we left the lowlands, it looked like a lot of gravel roads ahead. We started to climb steeply not far out of Butha-Buthe and it was a prodigious day of climbing. We nearly boiled Stanley's radiator a couple of times, climbing in second or even in first gear at times on the precipitous inclines. The scenery was spectacular, climbing from valley bottom past terraced fields into wild steep bushland that soon turned into high-altitude heath. Villages perched picturesquely atop hilltops, and Basotho men walked by, heads held regally high under their broad-brimmed hats, blankets wrapped around their shoulders and white gumboots worn proudly. It was sad to see almost every child we encountered running out to the road, hands outstretched in the universal gesture of begging; we heard later from cyclists that this stretch of road is bad for these same children throwing rocks at bikers.
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| Typical Lesotho highland scenery |
We kept on climbing, right up to Moteng Pass (2840 m). I knew that the highest peak in southern Africa,
Thabana Ntlenyana, is 3482 m above sea level, so I figured that we were probably at our highest point atop the pass. I was very wrong, as the road continued to undulate generally uphill across the highland plateau until we reached the
surreal ski resort at Afriski, where the road topped out at 3220 m before dropping down to the buildings at the foot of the slope (at a mere 3010 m). The resort contained the first really modern buildings we'd seen in the country, and was full of South African mountain runners, mountain bikers and enduro motorcyclists. We stopped to give Stanley's overstrained engine a chance to cool off and had a slightly pricey but delicious lunch in the Sky Restaurant, which bills itself as the highest restaurant in Africa. (This claim will contradict what we will encounter the next day.) The views were spectacular, and I really wished that I had my touring bike to explore the country. We hear that horse-trekking is the thing to do in these upland regions, but with our weather window closing the next day, there was sadly no time.
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| Terraced fields in eastern Lesotho |
We continued onwards and, amazingly, still upwards, past heathland speckled with sheep, cows and horses tended by lone Basotho men. It was windy and not very warm, but they seemed perfectly cozy inside their blankets and balaclavas. Somewhere along the way we passed the unmarked highest point of our entire southern Africa trip, at 3275 m. We had great late afternoon light on the landscape, on waterfalls like strings of candy floss draped over the steep green hillsides, and on the yellow wildflowers. It was a stunning drive. We drove past the turnoff to a pair of diamond mines and then a full-blown mine beside the road, its huge machinery and ominous tailing piles clashing violently with the wild beauty of the rest of the scenery. Eventually we tumbled down, down, down to a mere 2200 m, to the turnoff to Lesotho's second city Makhotlong. We turned away from it, eager to find a nice campground. Following our GPS we took a very steep and gullied gravel road down across a bridge over a rushing river and then up the other side to a strange little campground at Molumong. The place seemed half-abandoned, but there were still two employees there who directed us to camp outside the lodge. We put up Stanley's roof and whipped up a quick dinner looking out and downwards across the valley. The owner, when he turned up, was a grumpy Lesothan Basil Fawlty who was clearly in the wrong line of work. We did our best to ignore him, and realized why one of his employees had fled home at speed when she saw his car coming along the track: he was a mean-spirited grouch whom nobody wanted to be around.
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| Great view from our Lesotho campsite; pity about the owner! |
We realized that after two days of driving, we were really not very far at all from where we had camped in Royal Natal Park; the mountains on the skyline were the ones that encircle the Amphitheatre. This entire area would be a trekking paradise, just not in the rainy season. That day we also made two more unwelcome discoveries: our fridge was on the fritz again, for the third time in two weeks. As well, our 4WD, repaired at great expense in Maun in September, was again not working, as the transfer case chain was worn out and jumped when we put it in 4WD mode. We looked at the map and decided that we would drive as far as Port Elizabeth along the coast to get Stanley's problems sorted out in a big city before turning north towards the Kalahari and (we hoped) dry weather.
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| Lesotho cowboys along the road to the Sani Pass |
The next day, Monday, January 9th, was another day of fabulous scenery. We were up and off fairly briskly in the morning because we had the legendary Sani Pass ahead of us. We expected the asphalt to end at any moment (it had stayed with us all day the previous day, until we had turned off the A1), but it never did. Brand new perfect pavement led all the way up from Makhotlong to another 3240 m pass, through more glittering scenery that reminded me a lot of the Pamir Mountains in central Asia. From the crest of the pass we undulated a bit more, got more limitless views and then dropped steeply downhill towards Sani. Sani Top proved to be a very Tibet-like plateau, full of Basotho herders and their sheep and horses, and at the far end, up a barely perceptible incline, was
the famous Sani Pass itself. So far it had all been relatively easy driving on asphalt, but that was about to change. First, though we tucked into a big breakfast buffet at the
Sani Pub, which at 2874 m claimed to be the highest pub in Africa. Given that you can buy beer at the Sky Restaurant at Afriski, and that there's even a proper bar next door, this seems to be a post-truth, or at least an outdated, statement. There was a great atmosphere inside the pub of South African 4x4 enthusiasts who had climbed up the steep dirt track from the South African side of the track, and of thousands of photos and posters and flags and mementoes from the past 60 years of driving, skiing, hiking and drinking at this historic spot.
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| At (almost) the highest point of Stanley's Travels so far |
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| Terri at the top of the Sani Pass; that sign contradicts the one at AfriSki! |
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| Stanley crossing a stream on the track down from the Sani Pass |
We finished our food, took a couple of photos and then climbed back into Stanley, ready for what looked like it was going to be a seriously challenging descent. We passed quickly through Lesotho customs again, less than 24 hours since we had entered the country. Terri was at the wheel, as she always was for any off-road or 4WD sectors of the trip, and now she had the added challenge of not having 4WD to depend upon. She was tense, but after 20 minutes of very slow, methodical descent of steep, muddy gravel switchbacks the worst was over and we bumped down the still steep but not terrifying rest of the way down to the South African customs post 1200 vertical metres below. The driving wasn't enormously difficult (I think
we handled tougher conditions on the way back into Zambia from Malawi along the M14 road), but the consequences of any mistake or equipment failure would have been catastrophically fatal, so Terri was utterly relieved, and completely mentally drained, when she finally handed over the keys at the beginning of asphalt. It had been a spectacular day in Lesotho, but now it was time to make some serious distance towards Port Elizabeth.
Retreating from the Rains
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| Dramatic Drakensberg scenery |
The scenery at the foot of the imposing Drakensberg was lovely, with green meadows, horse farms, reservoirs, country inns and fishing spots. We stopped in at Himeville to buy diesel (we had burned through a lot of fuel on those steep climbs!) and Underberg to refill our (still failing) fridge. From then on it was a long and not very interesting drive through heavy traffic past the overpopulated, denuded hillsides of the former homeland of Transkei. We eventually gave up the struggle at the dismal little town of Qumbu, checked into the slightly dodgy Stone B&B and dragged our stove inside to heat up some leftover beef stew.
The following day we put in a very long day of 622 km, driving south through recurrent rain, The traffic continued to be brutally heavy most of the way to Port Elizabeth. There were intriguing-looking turnoffs early in the day towards the Transkei and Ciskei coasts, but it was raining and we were on a mission. As we crossed into Eastern Cape province, the vegetation changed dramatically from African bush to Mediterranean
maquis, or
fynbos as it's known in South Africa. When we finally got to Port Elizabeth, we rejected three campgrounds before finally ending up at the very professional and beautifully located
Willows campground 20 km outside town. The coast was windswept and pounded by big waves, but the campground had two sheltered tidal swimming pools and a good atmosphere about it.
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| Baviaanskloof |
Our three days in Port Elizabeth were productive, if expensive. The first day we ditched our old, dying fridge in favour of a new,
smaller but much better Engel model which had the added benefit of being easy to fix if something went wrong. It was expensive (8500 rand, or about 630 US dollars) but we had confidence that it would last and hold its value. We also bought new poles for our awning to replace the bent (and repaired, but still fragile) old ones. We also (after months of searching) found some new flag stickers to put on the side of Stanley for our Lesotho and Swaziland visits, and got Rwanda and Tanzania stickers for future trips. On the second day we got a blown rear shock replaced and had our air conditioning re-gassed; the technician said that there was barely any gas left in the system, and we noticed immediately that the AC actually cooled us down. Finally on the third day we dropped the car off at Llew's Auto Electric to get various electrical issues sorted. Frustratingly, few of them got fixed (our cruise control still didn't work, our reverse light still didn't work, and our Hella plug in the back of the cab was still disconnected. Terri was not happy!) On the positive side, though, the spaghetti wiring of our two storage batteries was now rationalized into something reasonable, and we were good to go. We returned for one last night at the Willows, ate some delicious steak and drank good red wine, and got ready to get out of the windswept coastal area.
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| Terri cycling in the Baviaanskloof |
We had one detour to make first, though. We had heard great things about the
Baviaanskloof Nature Reserve, and it was sort of on our way north from Port Elizabeth. We drove out from town on Saturday, January 14th, via a snack and shopping stop at
Tolbos, a well-known tourist stop in the farming town of Patensie. From there the road continued upstream into a narrow canyon (another "kloof) and turned to dirt. We found a lovely campsite at
Bruintjieskraal, a family farm with widely-spaced riverside campsites (we were lucky enough to get number 12, the nicest of the lot), set up camp and then cycled off along the road for a bit of an exploration. The scenery was pleasant, if not overly dramatic, and I itched to go hiking up into the narrow clefts of the rock that towered above the river. Instead we contented ourselves with some cycling, then headed back to our oasis, swam and set up a great campfire. I even pulled out the fishing rod and tried my luck in the river without any success. As we sat around the campsite after a wonderful steak dinner, I played guitar and we stared up at the stars, reflecting on how big a part our campsites, campfires and dinners played in the enjoyable fabric of our lives.
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Wonderful view from our Baviaanskloof campsite
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The next day was a day of mechanical frustrations. It started after we had packed up, ready to roll by 8:00. I turned the key and.....nothing happened. At all. We opened the hood, stared at the engine, I tried a few things, but after a frustrating 45 minutes I admitted defeat and cycled off to see if any help could be obtained from other campers. I struck out there, but I went to the house of the owner and found the owner and a neighbouring farmer watching rugby. One of them drove over to help and promptly spotted the problem: one battery lead had worked its way loose; it wasn't all the way off, but the connection wasn't sturdy enough for the current that ignition demands. A quick tighten and we were on our way, an hour and a half later than planned, feeling very foolish at our lack of car engine know-how. Later that day the radio conked out mysteriously, and just as mysteriously came back to life again. Towards the end of the day a warning light that we didn't recognize came on. After much Googling, we couldn't figure it out, and we pulled over in the small town of Hanover to buy diesel and see if we could find a mechanic. The gas attendants called a guy who showed up, looking distinctly tired and hungover, who had a look at things and diagnosed a fuel filter that was full of water. He drained a prodigious amount of water out of the filter (somewhere we had gotten some pretty low-quality diesel!) and the light went out, although it came on again 50 km down the road, probably due to a small electrical fault. In the meantime, though, I had crawled underneath Stanley to see if I could spot any issues, and found that our transfer case was losing oil. We decided to have it seen to in Kimberley, paid our mechanic and drove off in search of camping.
It was a pity that we were so distracted by mechanical issues that day, as we drove through some great scenery. We left behind the coastal fynbos and entered the vast extent of semi-arid land known as the
Karoo that makes up more than half of the land area of South Africa. We climbed up over interior mountain passes and across sweeping plains with great views and wonderful light. A cold wind raked the landscape and added to the feeling of being in the beautiful middle of absolutely nowhere. We were pleasantly surprised at how pretty we both found the Karoo. As we drove off from Hanover, we saw hundreds of kestrels swarming in the air and in the trees; our mechanic said that they stayed in the area in vast numbers for a couple of months and then disappeared for the rest of the year.
We found a decent campsite at Kambro, 20 km north of Britsville. With all the delays, we ended up rolling up in the dark at 8:40 pm, tired and out of sorts. We still managed to set up camp and get supper cooked by 9:30, grateful for lines of trees that gave us a bit of shelter from the searching tendrils of wind.
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| Social weaver nest complex at Leeupan |
Monday, January 16th found us up early after a night spent cozy inside Stanley despite the howling winds outside. We were on the road by 8:15 and pulled into the big, historic mining town of Kimberley by 11:30. We went straight to Kimberley Gear and Diff and dropped Stanley off to have his transfer case (and its various leaks) inspected. We pulled out our bicycles and cycled off to the Mitsubishi dealership to ask about ordering a new transfer chain. We spent a few hours at a local mall, eating and using wi-fi while we waited for news on Stanley. At 3:15 we got a phone call summoning us back. The transfer case needed a new chain, which would take days and days. We weren't willing to wait in Kimberley for days, so we decided to keep driving and topping up the transfer case oil every day until we got to Windhoek. By 5 pm we were driving out of Kimberley in search of a campsite; once again we turned down two of them (one didn't exist anymore, and one existed but was an overgrown municipal place that reminded us unhappily of Die Eiland in Upington). We were driving directly into the setting sun, and had to pull over for ten minutes because I couldn't see a thing. Eventually we found a great campsite after dark at Red Sands. We set up camp, cooked up dinner and went to bed tired.
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| Stanley at our idyllic campsite at Leeupan |
We woke up the next morning to a beautiful sunny day, with the wind finally dying down.
Red Sands, once we saw it by daylight, proved to be a delightful spot. Somewhere after Kimberley we had entered the South African part of the Kalahari, and the red sand dunes around us were a visible reminder of it. We spent the morning on a project that we had been putting off for some time. I had heard from my father that he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and was going to undergo surgery and radiation therapy; it was clear that I was going to have to go home in late February or early March. We wanted to sell Stanley, and to do that we needed to have a decent-looking ad. We spent the morning setting up Stanley and his vast array of contents in various photogenic arrangements. I shot a bunch of photos and we wrote up the text of an ad, ready to put on various online sites.
In Love with the Kalahari
It wasn't until 1:30 that we got packed up again and rolling northward into the Kalahari, headed towards Leeupan. It was an easy trundle, at least until we ran off the end of pavement 20 km before van Zylsrus and onto some very washboarded dirt. We made our way gingerly along the road and eventually made our way to the "bush camp" on
the Leeupan farm, where we set up shop for the next three nights. We were both very happy at the prospect of not doing any driving for two days, after lots of long days of driving and mechanical mishap. We were completely alone in the campsite, and we set out to explore our surroundings.
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| The dozens of entrances underneath a sociable weaver complex |
Leeupan is a place we had heard of on our last swing through the area; when we were
staying at Sakkie Se Arkie in Upington, our neighbours had told us about it, telling us that this was where the
Discovery Channel's Meerkat Manor documentaries were filmed. As we hadn't seen a single meerkat yet, despite lots of time in the Kalahari, it had stuck in our minds as a place we really wanted to see. We had a good scout around that afternoon but didn't find any meerkats. The scenery and wildlife, though, were still pretty impressive. There were a couple of enormous colonial nest complexes built by sociable weavers, and several big leopard tortoises wandering around, stirred from their torpor by the recent rains. Some springbok cantered by in the distance, and we saw a couple of ground squirrels which had us briefly convinced that they were meerkats. The Kalahari was almost unrecognizable from when we had last visited in September; rains had brought out fresh green grass and a carpet of dazzling yellow wildflowers. The multi-year drought seemed finally to be ending, and the eruption of life was wondrous to see. That evening, once we put up our lights, we were besieged by thousands of swarming flying ants and moths, also taking advantage of the rainfall to get out and procreate.
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| This little sociable weaver can build gargantuan condominium complexes |
That evening we stoked up a big campfire with some of the dry, hot-burning wood lying around on the ground. I braaied a big boerewors and we sat out under a canopy of millions of stars in a moonless sky, completely content. It felt good to have left behind the constant rain and crowded roads of the coast for the solitude and clear skies of the desert. When we had first come to South Africa, neither Terri nor I were big fans of deserts, but our time in the Botswanan Kalahari had converted us, and it felt great to be back in a landscape and biome that had
given us such great memories a few months previously.
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| Meerkat standing guard |
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| Ooh La La, one of the stars of Meerkat Manor, Leeupan |
The next day passed very pleasantly, with yoga, juggling, guitar, birdwatching and a long run. Terri tried to beat the heat (it was seriously warm in the middle of the day!) by taking a prolonged dip in a rather algae-rich water tank. We had our awning up on its new poles, and its shade was a life-saver in the desert heat. I spotted the biggest leopard tortoise I had ever seen, but when I ran back to get Terri and show her, I couldn't find it again. I couldn't believe that it could have moved fast enough and found enough cover to disappear. Finally in the afternoon we walked over across the main road to the farmhouse to talk to Lorraine, the owner, and ask about meerkats. We knew that the adjacent property was
the home of the Kalahari Meerkat Project, but that the animals often strayed over onto Leeupan property. Lorraine asked her farm workers where they had seen meerkats recently, and at 5 pm we went out in search of them. At first there were no sightings, but suddenly there they were, a group of almost a dozen little meerkats. They were quite a bit smaller than I had expected, and much more frenetically active than other species of mongoose. We stood and watched them for a while, taking photos of them digging rapidly in search of scorpions to eat and occasionally, comically, sprawling on their bellies to cool off on a patch of freshly turned colder sand.
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A meerkat cooling his belly on freshly-turned sand, Leeupan
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| Terri with a French volunteer doing fieldwork for the Kalahari Meerkat Project |
After a while a young Frenchwoman appeared with a big backpack out of which was sticking a radio antenna. It was one of the volunteers from the Kalahari Meerkat Project, come to do one of her thrice-daily observations and measurements. These meerkats have been radio-collared (they put them on the dominant females in each group) and observed for nearly 25 years, giving a wealth of field data. Their weights are measured every morning, noon and night (the volunteers put a small treat on the scales and the meerkats happily hop up to be weighed), while their behaviour and interactions are closely observed and recorded for half an hour each time. The volunteer, Catherine, had a big keypad that had all the possible behaviours on it, and we watched her pushing buttons that recorded the event, the time and the exact GPS location. We left her to her work and wandered off, very happy at our meerkat encounter. That evening we had another perfect campfire, sitting contentedly under the stars eating lentil stew and then playing guitar. That night we slept with the roof hatch open on Stanley: the temperature was perfect, but eventually the moon woke us up, shining in through the hatch onto our faces. It was a great way to sleep.
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| One of the many leopard tortoises we saw in the Kgalagadi |
We had one more lazy day at Leeupan the next day; it was such an idyllic spot that it was hard to tear ourselves away. We enjoyed our lifestyle of complete off-the-grid independence that Stanley gave us, and it was hard to face driving again. After a day of reading, sorting meerkat photos, running, yoga and napping, we had a great sunset to watch atop a nearby dune before braaing lamb chops over the campfire.
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| African wild cat spotted near the road close to Leeupan |
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| Huge sociable weaver complex near Twee Rivieren |
We were now on our way to Namibia, but there was one final Kalahari detour to make. Back in September we hadn't been able to get the necessary camping reservations to cross the enormous
Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park from the eastern end in Botswana to the western end in South Africa. We had heard lots of good things about predator sightings in the South African sector, so we drove off towards Twee Rivieren for one last hit of Kalahari wildlife. It was a great drive, with the unexpected bonus of sighting an
African wild cat (a small predator usually only seen at night as a pair of eyes glowing eerily in a spotlight's glare); it was running along a fenceline beside the road, probably looking for a way in. It hid inside a bush, but we had seen it and I managed to get a couple of photos before it ran off, still parallel to the fence. No sooner had we climbed in and driven off then we passed a truly enormous
Nile monitor lizard (or leguaan, as it is known in South Africa). All the way along the dirt road, we saw leopard tortoises of all sizes crawling, surprisingly quickly.
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| Southern ground squirrels congregating near the mouth of their burrow |
Since the South African dirt road was so miserable, we decided to do as the locals do and drive through Botswana. A rough dirt road led to a tiny border crossing at Middelputs, where formalities took no time at all and we only had to pay for road tolls and third party car insurance, a steal at 100 pula (USD 10). The perfect new asphalt road along the Botswana side of the border, along which we had driven in early October, disappeared rapidly under our tires, and in less than an hour we were crossing back into South Africa and turning north towards Twee Rivieren. We checked into the
SANParks Twee Rivieren restcamp right at the entrance to the park and relaxed for the afternoon in the swimming pool. It seemed crowded that night in the campsite after three nights of perfect solitude, even though there can't have been more than a dozen vehicles there.
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| Radio-collared lioness out for an early-morning stroll near Twee Rivieren |
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| Magnificent lion near Twee Rivieren |
We got up early the next morning, determined to find some cheetahs and lions. We were driving by 6:00 am, just in time for the camp gates to open. We made our way north towards Rooiputs in surprisingly chilly conditions. For the first 15 km or so, we saw almost nothing, but then we had an embarrassment of wildlife riches. First up was a lioness, wearing a radio collar that looked amazingly like a cowbell. She was stalking along parallel to the road, looking wonderful in the low-angle light of early morning that lit up the tall grass. Next we had several encounters with black-backed jackals, including quite a young pup who was resting under a tree waiting for mom to return with breakfast. There were plenty of springbok and gemsbok next, and then we finally had our first cheetah encounter after months and months of looking: an adult females and her two subadult children, silhouetted against the sky atop a dune near Rooiputs campsite.
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| A big gaggle of baby ostriches out for a stroll |
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| Baby black-backed jackal waiting for mom to return with breakfast |
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Red-necked falcons
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We were pretty excited by the cheetahs, even if we didn't have great photos because they were too far. There was more, and better, to come, though. As we drove north, past
Rooiputs (on the Botswana side of the border, this is a truly idyllic place to camp, but like all the good campsites on the Botswana side, it books up very quickly), we spotted what seemed to be a party of small korhaans. Closer inspection revealed that they were, in fact, baby ostriches! There were 16 of them in total, out for a morning walk with a male and two female adults. They were impossibly cute, and watching them bumbling along with their parents trying to keep them under control was pretty funny. Not much further along, we saw cars stopped and realized that there was a pride of lions: a big male (with the very dark, almost black mane of the Kalahari lions), two females and three babies, all lounging in the shade under a tree. We watched them for a good while before heading north for a bit.
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| Mother cheetah at Rooiputs |
Morning was drawing on, and we were getting hungry, so we turned back towards Twee Rivieren, passing the lion pride again (still comatose). We realized that there was a small track parallel to the main road, so we turned onto it in search of the cheetahs. This was a lucky decision as, not far from where we had seen them before, right on the track in front of us were the cheetahs, lounging in the shade. We edged as close as we dared without scaring them, turned off the engine and watched from a distance of maybe three metres. The mother was magnificent, and the two cubs, almost fully grown, were equally impressive. We sat there, barely daring to breathe, unwilling to have the spell broken. Fifty metres away, on the main road, two or three vehicles stopped to watch the cheetahs through binoculars, but luckily nobody figured out how to get onto our little track, and we had our close encounter all to ourselves. I snapped away madly, then just sat and watched, mesmerized and unable to believe our good luck.
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| Sub-adult cheetahs near Rooiputs |
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| Leopard tortoise nibbling at the sand on the jeep track |
Eventually the mother got interested in some springbok that were not too far away. Her ears perked up, she sat up and then remained motionless, staring at the prey. We hoped that she would suddenly explode into pursuit, but after a while she sauntered off towards the Rooiputs waterhole followed by her two daughters, all of them the picture of elegance, their pelts shining in the sun. We drove off back towards Twee Rivieren ecstatic: cheetahs at last, and so close to us! The drive back brought us more ostriches (not babies this time, sadly), gemsbok, several falcons of various species, more jackals and finally a secretarybird, one of our all-time favourite birds. We arrived back at camp thoroughly satisfied with our morning's work.
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| Springbok mothers and child |
A lazy afternoon by the pool followed, along with sorting through hundreds of photos from one of our best game-viewing mornings of the entire trip. We braaied up more delicious boerewors that night. Our sleep was interrupted that night several times by the unmistakeable sound of lions roaring. We woke up determined to find them, and another early-morning getaway after an unforgettable red sunrise, we soon found the lions. For once, since we were so early, we were the first on the scene, and we were pleased to have spotted the lions for ourselves. It was a big pride, with no fewer than nine lions, including three large males. They weren't doing much, but their size was impressive, and it was fun trying to spot more and more of them scattered throughout the bush; we saw only three at first, but one by one the others revealed themselves.
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| Ostriches on patrol in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park |
We had a profusion of leopard tortoises that morning, along with numerous kori bustards (including one very impressive displaying male that was so puffed up that we couldn't recognize it at first as a kori). There were big nursery day-care groups of springbok babies teetering on their matchstick legs (which would doubtless make great cheetah food), more gemsbok running off up the dunes, a few sturdy-looking hartebeest and lots of ostriches. We struck out on cheetah, but after yesterday's encounter, we weren't complaining.
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| Gemsbok (oryx) fleeing at our approach |
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| Hartebeest near Twee Rivieren |
By 10:00 am we were back at camp, buying a few supplies in the camp store, eating pies and planning our escape from the country. It was Sunday, January 22nd and we had been in South Africa proper for a little more than three weeks, racking up a ridiculous 6000 km in that time despite missing much of what we had originally planned to see. (In contrast, it took us five and a half months to do our first 20,000 km.) It hadn't turned out at all as we had originally thought, but our time at Leeupan and in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park had made up for our frustrations with the rainy weather and mechanical gremlins that had plagued us earlier. We had enjoyed South Africa, but now it was time to turn our sights towards everyone's favourite country to visit in southern Africa: Namibia.
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Male kori bustard puffed up and displaying
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It was an easy drive to the border at Rietfontein, across a landscape that was surprisingly dramatic. We crossed a couple of big, wide-open pans, one of them full of water after the recent rains. By 1:00 pm we were going through border formalities and driving into Namibia, my 132nd country and Terri's 78th.
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| Lion cub resting in the shade near Twee Rivieren |
