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.