Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (5-21)

Approaching Upington Thursday afternoon, I was excited to have my first views of the Kalahari, the reason for going to Upington. Shortly after checking in at the guesthouse, Willie, my guide for the Kalahari safari, came to meet me and plan food for the trip. He also told me that his girlfriend, Carli, would join us to help with cooking. She was also very knowledgeable and contributed a lot to my experience.

Friday morning we were off to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. When I asked about the name, Willie told me that Kgalagadi is the official Afrikaans word but that, because it is difficult for non-Afrikaans speakers to pronounce it correctly, it was changed to Kalahari. The South African part used to be called Gemsbok National Park, named for the gemsbok which is prolific there. Gemsbok is another name that has been changed for pronunciation reasons (It’s not pronounced the way it looks in English.); we know them as oryx.

The park is in both South Africa and Botswana. For two days, we drove along the dry riverbed that used to be the border, crossing back and forth between countries. There are small cement posts occasionally marking the border. The third day we headed west and were only in South Africa.

My safari was four days and three nights. I had booked camping because the price was less than accommodation, making the trip more affordable. But when I communicated with the agent, he told me that camping was only available the first night; so I was upgraded to accommodation the next two nights. However, when we arrived at the park, he had not paid for the second night’s accommodation and it had been cancelled. Fortunately, a camping site had opened up; so we were OK. After Lesotho, the night temperatures didn’t seem as cold as they might have otherwise. And the company provided plenty of blankets for me.

Friday we drove to the park. The highway is a long, straight road for the most part.

After a while, I saw a sign stating that it is Red Dunes Road. We could see many red dunes along the road, which was exciting, as this was the Kalahari I had come to see. 

Because of heavy rain and hail in late April, the dunes and the desert were covered with grass. So the Kalahari looked different from what I had anticipated from photos. We saw only a few red dunes with bare spots where the sand was very visible. Afterwards, when we were at WorldTeach Mid-Service Training, Chris told me that a man he talked to in Cape Town had gone to the Kalahari to see the grass-covered dunes, as it’s rare.

Once in the park, Willie and Carli set up camp and we had lunch. Then we were off for our first game drive for the rest of the afternoon. It wasn’t long till we spotted my first oryx. These were the first of many, validating the name Gemsbok National Park. I learned that if they are angry, their long, sharp horns can penetrate a car door. 

We also quickly came upon some springbok, which are also very common and which we saw plenty of. 

Looking closely at the first ostriches, I decided that I like the males’ tails, which I had never paid close attention to before. 

Farther along we came across blue wildebeest.

I began my fascination with sociable weavers’ nests. The name of the guesthouse in Upington is Versamelnes. When I asked where they got the name, the owner explained that it was a group of birds’ nests together. On the road, I mentioned this to Willie, and he explained that they are sociable weavers. We saw a number of nests along the road to the park. They build on electric poles and other poles along the road as well as in trees. 

Any number of nests are together, and the birds fly into their nest unhesitatingly, which is amazing to watch. 

We stopped under several huge sets of nests to watch them.

There are also messy weavers that have individual nests that are messily woven. 

And there are neat weavers that have neatly woven nests. The males build these nests, and if the female doesn’t like it, he has to build another one.

Toward the end of the drive we saw the only large, bare, red sand dune I saw that looked like the photos typical of the Kalahari.

We finished the day with an owl. At the end of our tour, Willie said we had seen three of the five types of owls in the park. He is really good at spotting them in the trees.

Each day we did a morning and afternoon drive for four to five hours each. Although he has only been a guide for a few months, Willie is very knowledgeable about the animals, as is Carli. He is excellent at spotting them in the far distance, which was where we saw many animals. The park has many waterholes, but because of the rain in April, the animals could find plenty of water and didn’t need to go to the waterholes. So we saw hardly any activity at the waterholes. There are picnic spots with toilets every 50 km.

The water for the waterholes is pumped from underground springs by windmills and solar pumps. 

The windmills are being phased out and replaced by solar pumps because they are less obtrusive to the landscape. We saw some of both.

When I woke up Saturday morning, Willie asked if I’d heard the lions roaring for a few hours. I’d missed that, as I noises rarely wake me during the night. (This was the case even before my hearing loss.) He said that the roar can carry as far as five kilometers; so it was impossible to tell where they were. After breakfast we headed down the road to see if we would find them. The first new animal was red hartebeest.

As we passed a versamelnes, Willie spotted two red mongooses playing under it.

After an hour we came upon a group of oryx, springbok, a wildebeest, and a bunch of cars that were on alert. 

Willie spotted the lions on top of the distant ridge, and with his binoculars he determined that there were a male, a few females, and a couple cubs. After he pointed them out, I could see the bumps, and with the telephoto and binoculars I could determine that they were lions. 

I learned later that these were the famous black-maned lions that are only found in the Kalahari. I couldn’t determine that until I looked at enlarged photos. 

When a lion moved, all the other animals became alert and faced the ridge. Then they would relax and eat while a few watched. It was fascinating. After watching them for forty minutes, we decided that nothing was going to happen soon, as the lions were sleeping and needed to circle around to move in closer over a long period of time; so we moved on. Later I met a woman who had seen the lions cross the road and walk up the ridge. That would have been exciting, but even if we had left earlier we might have missed that, and we might have missed the lions all together. What you see is truly is a matter of luck, being in the right place at the right time.

That was certainly the highlight of the day. Another interesting sighting was a large group of ostriches. 

After setting up camp, I decided to hang out at the camp’s waterhole with Willie and Carli for an hour instead of going on another game drive. It was really relaxing to enjoy the quiet and watch the birds. 

We also saw a yellow mongoose with a dead dove.

Saturday evening I took a ranger-guided sunset game drive with a two other people. 

Early in the evening we watched a large herd of wildebeests walking toward a waterhole. 

The sunset wasn’t fantastic, 

but the moon rise was. 

At dusk we saw an African wildcat in the grass. After dark, two of us were given powerful lights to shine into the grass and trees. The lights caught animals’ eyes, which we saw as blue dots. Flashing the light around and seeing the blue dots was fun. The ranger had powerful binoculars and was able to identify the animals far in the distance as well as those closer to us. 

A few animals were close enough to the road that I could take a photo with the light on the animal. One was my first steenbok, the smallest of the antelope.