In the Kalahari

Friday 31st to Sunday 2nd April

We arrived at the Matswere gates of the Khalahari by early afternoon. The journey was longer than planned as we had assumed we could get food and supplies on Oran's forgetting that this is a mining town with restricted access. The diamond mines are the biggest in the world and security is tight. This meant a drive back the way we had come to find the shops at the next town. It was busy and the queue for the bank was long, it was probably pay day. We also stopped in Rakops the last place before the dirt road to the Khalahari but the petrol station had n fuel.

The 40km of dirt track to get to the gate felt long and bumpy. We had a late lunch and headed in to the biggest game reserve in the world. As you see the grassland stretch away you get a feeling of the vastness. It also makes it hard to spot the wildlife, as we discovered! On our drive to the campsite which took a few hours we saw Oryx, with their huge straight horns, ostrich, spring bok identified as they pronk or jump with all four feet off the ground and lots of birds that were hard to identify but beautiful nonetheless.

We arrived at camp as it was going dusk and quickly got the tents up and dinner on. We shared our campsite with ground squirrel who seemed quite happy with our presence and put their noses out of their burrows every so often. Everyone slept well and enjoyed a lie in as we didn't need to get up early. We had time to make pancakes for breakfast served with fresh mango. The campsite is marked with a sign and is an area of cleared ground with a spiral shaped shelter with a plastic toilet over a hole and one with a bucket and shower nozzle. There's also a fire pit.

We spent most of the day driving to see if we could find the elusive giraffe and predators, but we only saw more deer and birds. A scorpion in the camp caused some excitement and a huge spider whose web hung across our path was equally fiercesome!

We headed back to camp made some dinner and squeezed all eight of us into one of the vehicles for an evening game drive, when we were sure we'd see some animals at the water hole. Just more birds!