kgalagadi trip: report part 1 29 october november 2017

Kgalagadi Trip: Report Part 1 29th October – 9th November 2017

Planning For The Trip

In July 2016 Linda and I had travelled to Kruger for the first time, much planning had gone into this

trip and much advice was sought using TripAdvisor Kruger Forum, in our naivety we had never heard

of 4x4community. Following the completion of a most successful trip we returned to the forum and

thanked all members that had helped us with our trip. One of those that had helped, John222333,

said now that we had our training wheels it was time to explore further afield and said Kgalagadi

Transfrontier Park was the place to go. We had never heard of KTP and frantic research began to

discover what was so special about this desert park more than 2,000 kms from Harare.

The research was rudely interrupted by our children returning from Australia to visit us on holiday

and our one daughter even had the audacity to ask us to plan a wedding for her and her boyfriend

whilst in Africa. When they left I continued the research and told Linda that this was certainly the

place we should visit in 2017. Many of our mates thought we were crazy when they heard we would

travel over 2,000 kms each way for an 11-night stay, we would be on the road travelling for almost

as long as we would be in the park. We had inadequate camping gear at that point in time and our

normal modus operandi was to stay in National Park chalets in both Zimbabwe and South Africa so

we had to book at 7.30am on 1st December 2016 in order to make most of our bookings for the trip.

That call was a real wake up as the fellow at SANParks kept telling me I was talking too slowly and

the places I was looking for were going quickly. Nevertheless over the next 11 months we were able

to come up with an itinerary that we thought would be pretty good, we would arrive in the park on

29th October and leave the park on 9th November. The itinerary was as follows;

Kalahari Tented Camp – 2 nights

Grootkolk Wilderness Camp – 2 nights

Gharaghab. Wilderness Camp – 2 nights

Nossob Rest Camp – 1 night

Kieliekrankie Wilderness Camp – 2 nights

Nossob Rest Camp – 2 nights


Travelling To KTP

The day of our trip finally arrived. I had to do a few things in the office and after a few hours my boss

became agitated and told me to push off. I was so excited to collect Linda that I rear-ended another

car on my way home, not my fault of course. No major damage was done but this small mishap

delayed us by three hours as I had the Zimbabwean Republic Police to deal with, our schedule was

so finely tuned that we couldn’t reschedule any of our overnight stopovers. Leaving late meant we

would be travelling part of the infamous Masvingo to Beitbridge stretch in the dark, sometimes this

is unavoidable but went against my better judgement. The trip passed without incident and we

managed to get through the Beitbridge border post without any hassles. Despite all the horror

stories one hears concerning Beitbridge we have only had a single nasty incident out of 14 crossings

at Beitbridge over the last 5 years.

We spent our first night at Forever Tshipise, (640 kms) we have been going to Tshipise for over 40

years and the resort is as good today as it has always been. The following day we had a very early

morning swim and set off on the next stage of the trip. We had booked online for a B&B called

Vryburg Game View Lodge (875 kms). This was a really good choice and one that we would highly

recommend, we had read a couple of reports saying that Vryburg was a bit nasty but we stayed alert

and had no problem. We arrived a little late to take advantage of any game viewing opportunities.

Anxious to get to KTP and having another long day ahead of us (775kms) we departed at 5.00am

rather than hanging around for breakfast. We had a bite to eat at Kalahari Mall in Upington and

bought groceries for the next 11 nights. We had read in advance that we couldn’t get alcohol in the

Northern Cape on a Sunday and had stocked up in Polokwane the day before.


VRYBURG GAME VIEW LODGE SWIMMING POOL

Our Room At Vryburg Game View


29th October to 31st October 2017 – Kalahari Tented Camp

2 very naïve people arrived at Twee Rivieren entrance gate at 1.30pm on the Sunday afternoon. At

the time we had no idea that the next 11 days would change our lives forever, more about that at

the end of this report. We were very impressed with the staff at Twee Rivieren entrance gate and

being very hot we decided to have a quick drink and bite to eat at the bar area of the camp. We

were just about to take a seat when an elderly British couple approached us and told us that they

had just experienced a leopard sighting in a tree overhanging the road at Auchterlonie 1.5hrs earlier.

We realised that our chances of still seeing the cat where they had seen it were minimal but on the

off chance we decided to forego the drink and snacks and travel to Auchterlonie. We reduced our

tyre pressure and set off, imagine seeing a leopard on our first day? En route to the anticipated

leopard we saw springbok, gemsbok, ostrich and even a distant sighting of our first cheetah but we

never hung around, we were in a hurry. As we neared Auchterlonie we saw 2 cars facing us stopped

under a tree, we slowed down as we approached the tree and looked up, the leopard was still there.

For the next hour the young leopard kept us enthralled it constantly moved from branch to branch

giving us some superb photo opportunities before climbing out of the tree and walking off over the

western dune, our Kgalagadi trip was off to the most exciting start possible!! By the time the leopard

walked off it was late and we still had to check into Kalahari Tented Camp at Mata Mata so we set

off. We still had sufficient time to see squirrel, tawny eagle, kori bustard, PCG, black-backed jackal,

spotted eagle-owl, secretary bird, giraffe and our fist sighting of very distant Kalahari lion.

We managed to get into KTC just as the sun was setting and heated up a meal that Linda had cooked

in Harare and frozen, the National Luna in the back of the vehicle was going to do plenty of work on

this trip. We were very impressed with our cabin and went to sleep pretty early having been awake

since 4.00am. Early next morning we were on the go again, while Linda made us coffee to wake us

up I prepared our standard early morning game viewing, ritual drink. When we stay in national parks

we drink an Amarula and hot cholate concoction with rusks at about 8.00am. The day was very kind

to us, in the early morning we saw bat-eared fox soon after leaving camp and gemsbok and

numerous smaller bird species followed. When we arrived at Dalkeith we were treated to our first


close-up Kalahari black-maned lion, we spent ages with him, marvelling at the sight we were

witnessing a few metres from our vehicle. Finally we dragged ourselves away and carried on with

our trip. We saw plenty of bird life, PCG juvenile, crimson-breasted shrike, Verreaux’s eagle-owl,

swallow-tailed bee-eater, spotted eagle-owl, plus springbok, giraffe and wildebeest, we couldn’t

believe how so much game could exist in a desert. Well satisfied with our morning drive we returned

home for a scrumptious brunch, this is our daily routine, up at sparrow’s, game view, brunch, rest,

game view, dinner, sleep.

That afternoon we had another worthwhile trip, the highlights being sightings of our first ever

African wild cats, crowned lapwing, African hoopoe, cheetah and martial eagle. Unfortunately this

marked the end of our stay at KTC and we had to pack up ready to move to Grootkolk the following

day which would be a very long day. The start to our KTP trip was beyond our wildest expectations,

the sightings in our first 2 days had made the entire trip worthwhile. It was, of course extremely hot

but we anticipated that before we arrived, our thought process was that with little rain in the

previous 6 months would mean animals would be close to waterholes, our assumption was proving

to be correct.


ONLY 250 KMS TO GO

2,050 KMS TRAVELLED AND WE ARE FINALLY HERE


A SIGHT THAT WE WOULD COME TO KNOW SO WELL

OUR HEAVEN ON EARTH


OUR FIRST LEOPARD

AREN’T YOU TIRED OF ME YET?


YOU COULD NEVER GET TIRED OF THIS SIGHT

ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END


LION IN THE DISTANCE


KALAHARI TENTED CAMP


SAFEGUARDING CAR TYRES AGAINST THE LION


WINKING SPOTTED EAGLE-OWL


31st October 2017 to 2nd November – Grootkolk

We set off early hoping to see game and birds on our way to Nossob where we decided to have our

lunch, we were going to use the upper dune road to get from the Auob riverbed to the Nossob

riverbed. On our way we saw an unusual scene with an African wild cat having caught some prey and

both a tawny eagle and a martial eagle determined to rob the cat of its prize. The action took place

behind a bush but we did manage to get decent photos of both eagles. We got good photos of quite

a few birds on the dune road and what we have now come to realise is the customary steenbok

which appear to thrive in that area. We broke at Nossob for a breather and were told the waterholes

moving north had an abundance of cats. They were correct as there were 2 large lion at Kwang and

cheetah in the shade at Bedinkt. Just after Bedinkt we flagged down an oncoming motorist to tell

him that we had seen lion and cheetah at the 2 previous waterholes, he burst out laughing and

asked if this was our first trip, when we confirmed that it was he told us that there were cats at the

next 5 waterholes too. At Kousant we saw a pride of 5 lion lying in the shade near the water tank,

these included two cubs.

We arrived at Grootkolk late afternoon and having been in the car for about 11 hours we decided to

put our feet up and watch the waterhole in front of the camp. This was a wise decision as soon after

unpacking we saw a lanner falcon kill and eat an unsuspecting dove. During the following hours we

were treated to red hartebeest, eland, springbok, spotted hyaena and brown hyaena. We were

unable to photograph all of these because my night photography skills were sadly lacking. Grootkolk

has a great waterhole and is an excellent destination if you are not going the camping route.

We sat and watched the waterhole for a while the following morning and both brown hyaena and

red hartebeest revisited the waterhole. With nothing further happening we went on a game drive

towards Union’s End and had sightings of wildebeest, yet more lion, red hartebeest, bat-eared fox,

meerkat and squirrels. We arrived at Union’s End waterhole and watched birds drinking and once

again proved too slow with the camera as a PCG swooped and caught one of the birds at the

waterhole, birds 2 cameraman 0. We waited for a while but the PCG was full from his earlier success


so we decided to visit Union’s End. About 1 km from the waterhole we saw 2 very large black maned

lion walking in the bush towards us, Linda suggested that they may be going to drink so we did a U-

turn and waited for the lion. As is so often the case Linda was correct and a few minutes later the 2

lion emerged and treated us to a really special sighting. After drinking the one male walked directly

to my window, slowly licking his lips, I wanted photos but I also wanted the window up, I succeeded

in both quests. After treating us for 15 minutes the lion disappeared into the bush and we visited

Union’s End.

After all the excitement of the morning we decided to have a short game drive in the afternoon

seeing northern black korhaan and a pride of lion. We returned to camp in time to see a honey

badger and pretty much the same visitors as the previous evening with both varieties of hyaena

amongst others. We decided that if ever we returned to KTP in a non-camping capacity Grootkolk

was definitely a must see. It is a great feeling braaiing your meal in the evening watching the animals

visiting the waterhole. We had an early night as we were on the move the next day as we had to get

to Gharaghab. I have to admit I was nervous about the 4x4 route even though it appeared that the

route out of Gharaghab was the more feared route – time would tell.


LION APPROACHING UNION’S END


LION EMERGING FROM THE BUSH


WHAT A MAGNIFICENT CREATURE

WE WRE AFRAID OF BEING ON THE MENU


UNION’S END


2nd November to 5th November– Gharaghab and Nossob

We were up at 4.30am armed with Amarula and hot chocolate ready to leave for Gharaghab.

Another set of perfect sunrises awaited us, we were amazed at how quickly the colours of the

sunrise changed from a deep red to a brilliant yellow in a matter of minutes. The feared trip to

Gharaghab never materialised as there was a bit of thick sand on the way into the new wilderness

camp but not much else, maybe that is because we drive a Toyota rather than a Landrover!!

We were immediately impressed with the layout and scenery that awaited us at Gharaghab, it really

is a picturesque setting with the chalets built on a dune with the waterhole far below. We spent

most of the next two days in camp as we never intended attempting the exit road more than once.

The only time we left camp was to retrieve a Landrover that had broken down a short distance from

camp, it gave me great delight to photograph the towing exercise and to ultimately WhatsApp the

photo to my boss in Harare, an avid Landy owner. The owner of the Landy discovered that to

retrieve his Landy by a towing company in Upington was going to cost him about R25,000 and

politely asked me to tow him to Twee Rivieren, equally politely I refused. I know next to nothing

about vehicles and a fellow guest told me that pulling the Landy long-distance with my car was a

non-starter, eventually the Landy owner convinced another gent driving a hired Landcruiser to do

the towing, the camp attendant agreed that they could use the entry road rather than towing out of

the exit road – problem solved.

We enjoyed two relaxing days at Gharaghab and never saw very much game, predominantly

antelope drinking at the waterhole and a myriad of smaller birds. We took delight in seeing a regular

visitor to the waterhole, a gemsbok we christened “Oops” due to the one horn being completely

deformed. There were plenty of rodents, including an elephant shrew, and lizards around the

chalets, we made certain that our foodstuffs were securely locked away. We saw what was about

the 10th brown hyaena of the trip, we were amazed that there were so many of them in the park.

The sunrises and sunsets in the camp were a joy to behold. After two days of relaxation it was time

to leave, we made sure to get an early start while the sand on the exit road was still at its hardest.


Our trip out was a lot rougher than our trip in particularly the infamous dune just before joining the

Nossob/Grootkolk road. When we got to the dune there were three paths leading up, we took the

one that looked the firmest and gunned it up the slope, upon reflection we probably went too fast

but made it first time.

We had a one-night stay at Nossob as we considered a drive from Gharaghab to Kieliekrankie too far

to drive in one day. On the way to Nossob we once gain saw plenty of cats. An interesting group was

at Kwang with two large males and a lioness relaxing by the roadside, whilst on the other side of the

road was a carcass of a fairly recent kill, it looked very much like the remains of. mombe (domestic

cow). When we passed Cubitje Quap we had our first sighting of the well-known bateleur that

frequent this waterhole in the early afternoon. Arriving at Nossob fairly late we decided to take it

easy at the camp waterhole. We visited reception and the staff there confirmed that it was indeed a

mombe that the lion had killed, they suspected it had come across from Botswana, how it got as far

as Kwang was an unsolved mystery.

Early the next morning we revisited Kwang and had the 3 lion to ourselves for over an hour, it was a

wonderful spectacle, the one lion was eating the carcass whilst the other two were mating every 15

minutes. We went across to Kwang where a large group of gemsbok were walking around the trough

but not drinking, we wondered why and only when we got close did we see that a honey badger was

on the side of the trough chasing the gemsbok away, only once he had his fill and moved away did

the gemsbok dare venture to the waterhole. We had thoroughly enjoyed our early morning drive

and began our journey to Kieliekrankie.


This is, of course, “Oops”


5th November to 7th November – Kieliekrankie

After the excitement around Kwang we proceeded to Kieliekrankie, en route we saw a group of

cheetah, a mother and 3 almost fully grown cubs, we had just missed an unsuccessful hunt, we also

saw our first kudu. When we reached Kieliekrankie we immediately realised why it was so popular, it

was similar to Gharaghab being built on a dune but without the 4x4 restriction of Gharaghab. There

was not much happening at the camp waterhole, but there was an abundance of small birds near

the cabins, we saw our first ever bokmakierie and dusky sunbird

We did a late afternoon drive and saw a group of hyaena, giraffe, bat-eared fox and plenty of ostrich

but nothing particularly special. The next morning we travelled east to Kij Kij, south to Twee Rivieren

and saw “that” tree before completing the triangular drive. We saw a special sighting of a black

harrier in flight and also an unexpected black-headed heron, apart from these birds there was not

much else to see. We had read so much about Kieliekrankie and to be honest felt a little let down by

what we had seen, notwithstanding the fantastic sightings we had experienced elsewhere. We were

unsure of what to do in the afternoon and decided upon a late afternoon drive.

The only highlight of the first part of the trip was a hare partially hidden on the lower dune road. We

had been lucky with our leopard on the Auob River road so decided to travel that again, more in

hope than expectation. With little happening we were lucky with what appeared to be a wounded

Verreaux’s eagle-owl at Houmoed. With time running out we turned to return home. When we

reached Monro we saw a cheetah drinking next to the waterhole which broke our “cat” duck at

Kieliekrankie. There was also a tawny eagle at the waterhole which took off as we arrived. Linda

followed the eagle in flight with her binoculars and on top of the calcrete ridge a movement caught

her attention. She asked me to look through my camera telephoto lens to see what she had seen. It

took me ages to find and all I could see was the top of a head and two small, furry ears, it was very

far away and I told Linda I was fairly certain it was a lioness. We watched the cheetah until it had its

fill and it walked directly past the car, unfortunately time was marching on and satisfied that we had

enjoyed a good look at a cheetah I told Linda it was time to go home.


As I started the car and began pulling away Linda urged me to stop, I asked what she wanted and she

said “my that lion you identified has got an awful lot of spots!!”. I was fairly certain she was wrong, I

stopped the car reached for my camera and took a look for myself and as usual Linda was right. Now

kneeling on the calcrete ridge I could clearly see a gorgeous leopard, wow how lucky were we that

my passenger had such good eyesight. It became abundantly clear that the leopard had been waiting

for the cheetah to finish drinking before the leopard very slowly started making its way down the

calcrete ridge to come to Monro for a drink. At this time our Kieliekrankie neighbours pulled up next

to us and told us to hurry as we would only just get back to KK in time. When we told them that

there was a leopard slowly making its way to the waterhole they told us they had visited KTP 14

times and never seen a leopard, they couldn’t see the leopard but when we assured them we could

see it they parked just in front of us. The leopard finally reached the waterhole and drank for a few

minutes before walking between our vehicles and walked over the low ridge on the western side of

the Auob River. By now it was very late and we had to travel at the upper end of the speed limit to

get back to KK whilst it was still light. The camp attendant came across and reprimanded us stating

that he realised we must have had a reason for travelling at 40km/h in the fading light, but reminded

us that rules must be obeyed. We felt chastised but finally Kieliekrankie had lived up to its

reputation. We went to sleep that night sad that our trip was rapidly coming to an end with our last

2 nights being booked in Nossob, sad but oh so very happy with our ongoing good fortune.


THAT” TREE, NEED WE SAY MORE


WHAT CHANCE DO YOU STAND OF SEEING THE LEOPARD IN THIS PHOTO?

A HEAVILY CROPPED PHOTO SHOWS WHERE THE LEOPARD IS


7th November to 9th November – Nossob

We had booked 2 nights at Nossob in the new riverside chalets and were looking forward to these,

we did make a quick trip along the Auob road to see if we could repeat the previous night’s success

but to be honest we couldn’t really expect that sort of luck again. We did see a cheetah high up on

the western dune and thought it may be a leopard but a quick look through the binoculars

confirmed it was a cheetah. We had a quick breakfast at Kieliekrankie after the short game drive and

set off for Nossob. The road was fairly quiet, we did see galloping gemsbok and thought there may

be something after them but nothing followed them. We saw lion and cheetah close to waterholes,

resting under trees but we had been spoilt over the last 10 days and had become pretty blasé.

Upon arrival at Nossob we checked in very quickly, the new riverside chalet was really great, the

staff member at the check-in told us we were the first people to use the chalet. We never hung

around at Nossob, we dumped all our unnecessary luggage and proceeded to Cubitje Quap as

quickly as possible hoping to see the Bateleur doing their lunchtime special. We were not

disappointed, when we arrived there were a number of vulture close to the waterhole, both lappet

faced and white-backed. These were soon replaced by Bateleur and at one stage there were 8

bateleur around the water, we spent ages watching these amazing birds and managed to get some

very pleasing photographs particularly given the time of day. There were also a number of secretary

birds, grouse and smaller birds at the waterhole. After we had our fill of birds we returned to Nossob

to enjoy our chalet, on the way there we saw a puff-adder crossing the road, we had see a cobra

near Nossob a few days earlier but it had disappeared before we managed to get our cameras out.

Sitting on our verandah at Nossob we could watch the waterhole for the next few hours and saw

springbok, black-backed jackal, an adult cheetah with a cub, kudu, brown hyaena, Verreaux’s eagle-

owl and lion, it was a special feeling watching game from the comfort of the chalet. The next

morning we watched two adult lioness strutting their stuff on our early morning game drive, soon

after leaving camp, they were closely followed by a sighting of 3 cheetah. Cubitje Quap delivered a

large number of grouse and doves, a lanner falcon was in the area but never managed to catch


anything. We went to Kwang hoping to farewell the lion that we had seen many times, they were

not present but we saw a honey badger milling around the vehicles parked there. I managed to get a

fairly decent photo of a black-chested snake eagle on our way back to camp. In the afternoon we

decided to travel south for a change but apart from 2 cheetah lying in the road in the late afternoon

we never saw much else.

With a long drive to Vryburg the next day we had an early night. At 4 o’clock in the morning we were

woken by a deafening roar, I jumped out of bed grabbed by spotlight and went out onto the

verandah, I turned the spotlight on and about 4 metres from our verandah there was a beautiful

lioness, I quickly retreated even though she didn’t appear to be interested in me. We made an early

start and even on our way out the animals continued to appear on all sides. We saw the 2 cheetah

we had seen the previous evening, kudu, brown hyaena (again) and a lioness with her cubs sitting on

the road near a gemsbok kill. We checked out at Twee Rivieren with no hassles whatsoever and on

our way home used the same stops we had used on our way to KTP, ie Vryburg Game View Lodge

and Tshipise. We arrived back in Harare late afternoon on Sunday and I looked forward to returning

to work the following day for a rest!!! Please see a final summary after the following photos.


Kgalagadi 29th October to 9th November Final Summary

I said at the start of my trip report that this trip changed our lives, that is not a figure of speech, it is

the gospel truth. Linda and I have discussed this, and subsequent KTP trips a number of times over

the years trying to determine exactly what it is that sets this park apart from all the others we have

visited and we have never come up with a finite answer. Obviously this was a very special trip with

many more sightings than may normally be the case, but it is so much more than that, Kgalagadi gets

under your skin in a way that it is impossible to ignore, it may be the lure of the red sand between

your toes, we think it must be different for all of us.

When we returned to Africa in 2015 after living in Australia for 10 years we agreed to work for 4

years in Harare and then galivant around Southern Africa for 12 months before returning to our

children and grandchildren in Australia where we would permanently retire. On our way back to

Harare I asked Linda what we were going to do with our lives moving forward. We pretty much knew

that having discovered KTP 12 months would never be enough to see the places on our bucket list

and to revisit places like Kgalagadi, Kruger, Gona Rezhou, Mana Pools, Hwange etc. It was this trip

that had created that desire. We thought that perhaps the 12 months would become 24 months, we

knew finances would be a consideration as staying in accommodation like SANParks, Zimbabwe

National Parks, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia would become too expensive. Whilst driving home

we toyed with the idea of a camper trailer, when we got back to Zimbabwe I spent hours on the 4x4

community forum and we eventually we settled on a Bush Lapa Baobab. We took possession of our

Baobab in July 2019 and that became our permanent home, the 24 months has now moved out to

probably 36 months. We stayed in KTP for 6 weeks in November/December 2019 visiting all three

RSA campsites plus Polentswa and Rooiputs. At present we are sitting in Australia, as directed by our

children but as soon as the Covid thing gets sorted out we will return to our nomadic lifestyles,

hopefully KTP will be close to the top of the list.


If you’ve managed to get to the end of this report we hope you have enjoyed travelling with. us.

Please let us know what you think of our trip and our style of reporting, we are new to this and any

advice, positive or positive criticism would be appreciated. Till next time, cheers John and Linda.

kgalagadi trip: report part 1 29 october november 2017

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