Kgaswana Mountain Reserve

I took the kids camping over the weekend of January 8th at the Kgaswane Mountain Reserve, about an hour and a half drive from our house. We had a very nice time despite a bit of bad weather. We went on a hike in the mountains and saw Eland, zebra and impala. We even had a dip in a beautiful mountain stream. The park also has some amazing quartzite rock formations.

South African Traffic Jam

While we were driving through Pilanesberg we got stuck in a massive traffic jam. The cause of the whole mess was none other than a bull elephant walking down the middle of the road. As it walked up the road all of the cars moved slowly with it. That includes the cars facing head on with the elephant. They all slowly backed down the road as it came their way. This went on for nearly a half an hour until he decided to move off into the bush.

Pilanesberg, South Africa

We went down to Pilanesberg, South Africa last weekend for a short camping trip. Pilanesberg is a big game reserve that is about a 3 hour drive from our home here in Gaborone. They have all of the Big Five in the park. (If you don't know the Big Five, click on the link).

The park surrounds the crater of a long extinct volcano, that last erupted 1.5 Billion years ago. Yes that is Billion with a B. The crater makes a series of concentric rings of hills that radiate out from a central valley.

It is near the end of the wet season here, so the park is dense with long grass and green vegetation. It is very beautiful, but all that greenery makes it difficult to spot anything but the largest animals. Thankfully there are plenty of large animals in the park. We saw more than 20 elephants. Some at pretty close range. The park is abundant in Giraffe as well. We lost count of how many of those we spotted. In fact at one point, as I was driving around a tight curve in the road I had to jam on the brakes to avoid rear ending a giraffe that was standing in the road. We also saw loads of wildebeest, Impala, warthogs, zebra and a few white rhino. The bird life in Pilanesberg is also incredible. I usually stick to the mammals in my game viewing, but you can't help but notice the beautiful colored birds throughout the park.

Where we were camped was a bit of a zoo. There was little or no privacy while camping in the Manyane campground. It was more densely packed than a KOA on 4th of July weekend. It was nicely kept though. It was clean, with nice facilities including a small store, a swimming pool, playground, gift shop and a restaurant. We ate at the restaurant the night before we left and had an interesting meal. I had the Eland steak, and Cassandra had the Kudu. Impala chops were also on the menu, but will have to wait till next time.

Still with all those people around you had to watch out for thieving baboons. We saw baboons running throughout the campground stealing food and generally causing havoc.

We will be going back to Pilanesberg in April when my Mom and Bill Arrive for a visit. We will be staying in the nice chalets they have on sight, so we should have a bit more comfortable stay.

Tuli Block: part I

We spent 3 nights camping in an area in eastern Botswana called the Tuli Block. It consists of a series of private game reserves on the edge of the Limpopo river. It's about a 6 hour drive from home on some very good roads. The roads were paved all the way to within the last 30 kms. We stayed at a very well kept camp site run by the Limpopo River Lodge, right on the banks of the river. In this area the river acts as a border between South Africa and Botswana, so as we sat at our campsite and looked across the river we were looking at South Africa.

We arrived on Tuesday afternoon and set up camp and relaxed after a long drive. As night falls all of the animals come out, and the sounds of living creatures splashing about in the water can be a little creepy. Hippo's and crocodiles live in the Limpopo, but I didn't see any. Cassandra swears we one of the creatures lurking about in the dark was a hippo, but I am sceptical.

Wednesday turned out to be a bit frustrating. We realized we were going need more fuel if we were going to be doing much in the way of game drives. The closest gas station on the Botswana side of the river was about 90 kms away. There was a station closer (about 40 kms away on the South African side), but we would have to go through immigration paper work and things at the border station if we went that way, so we decided to go to the farther station. After driving for about an hour and a half we finally made it to the town with the gas station only to be told they were out of fuel. The next closest station was another 60kms away. We had about a third of a tank left, so I decided we would cross the South African border and get gas since we knew that there was more than one station in that town and when we filled up we would only be 40 kms away from camp instead of 150kms. We drove back crossed the river, went through the border check point (thank goodness Cassandra had all our paperwork), and made it to the gas station just as the fuel light came on. We had spent almost 6 hours of our day driving around dealing with this. The moral of this story is to always carry a supply of fuel with you when traveling outside the city. You can guarantee that I will from now on.

On a side note; when we got back to camp I realized that all the rough road driving had jarred the tail pipe loose from the muffler, the ramifications of which we would not see until the drive back home.

Khutse Game Reserve: Day III

The storm continued through most of the night, but we woke to a cloudy but calm and dry morning. We packed up quickly so we could take our time getting back to town on that rough road.

We found 3 big scorpions under Matt's tent while we were packing it up. If only for that reason alone I was glad to have our new rooftop tent. I have been eyeing these ingenious devises since before we came to Africa, and so we picked this one up(in the picture) as an early Christmas present to ourselves. It's made of sold canvas, and should last for many years to come.

Our drive back home was thankfully uneventful. We did spot some leopard tracks that ran for about a mile down the middle of the dirt road. Also we passed a large patch of brush that had caught fire from a lighting strike in the previous nights storm. This just solidified in me the knowledge that this is not a place to underestimate. It is a truly wild place in which humans are not necessarily on the top of the food chain. I have learned some valuable lessons on how to better prepare for our next excursion.

Now we will begin planning for our trip to the Tuli Block next week. Hopefully we will get a chance to see a few of the elephants that roam this area.

Khutse Game Reserve: Day II

We woke slowly on our second day in Khutse, with a mission to find a few wild animals and a camping spot that was farther out in the bush. It became apparent relatively quickly that we would not be seeing a large concentration of animals on this trip. It's the rainy season and with an abundance of water the animals tend to scatter. We did see qute a few Hartebeest, Springbok, and Ostrich, but I knew our odds on catching sight of a Lion were slim to none.

We drove out to a camp spot about 25 km inside the park a had a bit of lunch and rested under an acacia tree during the heat of the day. At about 3pm a few clouds came in and we began to see lightning in the distance. The weather cooled down quite a bit, so we decided to do another game drive and check out some of the other camping areas for future reference.

The game was scarce, and the weather was coming in strong. The sky got dark and it was raining off and on. Then at about 5pm we got a real surprise. It began to hail. Some of these hailstones were nearly the size of a marble and I started to fear that they would bust out a window. It was over pretty quick, but we knew that we wouldn't see any more game out in the open after that storm, so we began to head for camp.

We found a good spot over looking a pan in which we hoped we would see some game in the morning. The lightning intensified all around our camp, and I must admit it made me a bit nervous. We were in a wide open area, under a tall tree. Not the safest spot. That went on for hours, and we called it an early night. We would break camp early in the morning and hope to catch sight of some more game as we made our way out of the reserve.

Khutse Game Reserve: Day I

Last weekend Dillon and I went camping with my friend from the Embassy, Matt Williams and his son Jack, in the Khutse Game Reserve (click on the link to read more about Khutse).

There is about 100km of rough dirt road that you must travel over before you get to the Reserve. It is without a doubt one of the worst roads I have ever been on. I was in the lead vehicle on the way there, and unfortunately Matt had a massive tire blowout about 25 km before the main gate to the reserve. When I got to the gate I figured Matt would be right behind me by only a few minutes. The road was very dusty and I had lost sight of him and thought he had pulled back to stay out of my dust cloud. But Minutes turned to hours and I was getting quite worried. I had no idea what had happened to him. It was getting dark and I wasn't sure I could find him after dark, not to mention the park Rangers were getting anxious to close the gate for the evening.

A very nice lady at the ranger station let me borrow her phone, and I was able to get a hold of Cassandra. My cell phone was only useful as a paper weight out in the bush. I confirmed with Cassandra that Matt had the embassy satellite phone with him, and felt a bit of relief to know that he could use it if he was in real trouble. He called his wife and told her about the tire trouble, she told Cassandra, and Cassandra called the lady at the ranger station, who told me that he was on his way. The Rangers (and I want you to know that I am using this term very loosely) let me man the gate for the night until they arrived at about 8pm. I closed up the gate and we went to the camp spot I had made not too far from the entrance.

That night we saw two snakes, one of which was a venomous Adder of some sort, scorpions, and a multitude of insects, including some stick insects that were nearly a foot long(they fly by the way). The ground was literally crawling with bugs. Ant, termites and beetles were everywhere. Sleep did not come easily for me that night with all of the insect, bird, and reptile noises. I woke at about 3am and looked out the window of our tent to see an owl not even two feet away.

I did manage to get this picture of the sunset, which I must say was one of the most amazing I have ever seen.