Kalahari

BEYOND THE FRONTIERS

Join Lorne & Heidi Sulcas on an incredible journey deep into the Kalahari and onto Namibia where they spent a memorable five weeks in the bush with enough excitement to last a lifetime.

What an incredible five weeks we had in the bush in the Kalahari and Namibia this past July! We made family memories that I know will last us all a lifetime. Our three-year old daughter, Tali, joined us and I don't think will ever forget standing 15 m from a male lion roaring his lungs out at the fence of our restcamp. Lorne and I will remember forever the image of a naked little three year old running around on the dry soda lake of Etosha.

We spent a total of four weeks in the bush and the balance driving the enormous distances from place to place - we drove a total of 8,000 kilometers. Every night we camped (except for two) in our tent, some nights pitched in the dark in freezing temperatures. Between population centers (whatever that is in a country of 1.8 million people!) there is NOTHING sometimes for 300 km at a time, including mud huts, villages, or evidence of human habitation. However they do have picnic tables along the great north road in Namibia about every 20 km or so.

The Great North Road in Namibia is another misnomer, though considering all the other roads are gravel and this one’s tarred, maybe it’s not too far off. There is not a shoulder on any of the roads in Namibia outside of Windhoek, the capital, which appears to be the only city in the country with traffic lights. Of course, lighting or signs on the road are also nonexistent, except for mileage signs. After sunset, cars on the road seem to evaporate. We spent one night driving an hour after sunset and saw only one other car on the road. It’s a bit spooky. I have to say though that the gravel roads in Namibia are better than most paved roads on the continent. They are absolutely fantastic, with the occasional washboard or rocky patch. It’s actually quite remarkable.

The journey began in Cape Town and we drove all the way through to Augrabies Falls National Park in South Africa (nine hours). The Augrabies is a very pretty little park on the edge of the Orange River. Like all the other National Parks in South Africa, the facilities are very good: scullery, ablutions including hot, clean showers, barbeque area, etc. In SANP parks, we really feel like we are camping in luxury compared to all the years of our backpacking.

The following day we arrived in Upington, a frontier town and the last of outpost of civilization before the three hour drive we did to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park (formerly the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park). It has been so renamed because it now encompasses a large area of Botswana as well. This is a Peace Park, very exciting because the formal unification opens up large areas to explore if you’re adventurous and have a caravan of 4x4 vehicles. One of the two main roads in the park actually zigzags between Botswana and South Africa.

Our first night in the Kalahari we were treated to a most magnificent rise of the full moon, which was nearly as bright as a sunrise.

We hardly had to use any artificial light when there was a moon in the Kalahari. Tali learned about moonshadows. The sky in the Kalahari, especially the night sky, is like nowhere else in the world. The colours that you see in the sky are indescribable after the sun sets, it actually looks fake.

One really doesn’t have to see any wildlife in the Kalahari to experience the magic of the Kalahari. I don’t know if it’s the colour of the sky or the bright orange sand or the sound of the wind coming over the dunes or the smell of the dust, but once you’ve been captivated by the magic of the Kalahari, it’s within you forever and you become drawn there by a greater force.

On our drive toward the park we started seeing sociable weavers nests. These little birds build huge thatch-like nests on phone poles and in trees and live communally sometimes up to hundreds of birds in a nest. They are remarkable.

We saw a barn owl one day sitting on one of the nests and Tali was wondering if it might be chasing the birds out of their home!

There are three established camps in the Kalahari for camping (and a couple of new ones with only a couple of permanent tents for non campers). They are relatively small and quiet for the most part. We heard lions roaring near camp virtually every night in the Kalahari, though we didn’t see them as often. Lorne found lots of tracks though. He taught Tali the fine art of tracking and she was soon an expert at tracking everything from beetles to ground squirrels to Dad around camp.

Besides being out of range of any form of communication, the camps are first world and we managed to find some brilliant spots under beautiful trees with primo views. During our first stop we camped under a Camelthorn tree, which drops beautiful, smooth pods every so often.

Our most favorite camp in the Kalahari is called Nossob. It’s right in the middle of the park and the nights are dead quiet except for the sounds of the bush. It’s brilliant. I take that back, because of the frigid temperatures one or two nights we heard the sound of a generator for a few hours. Each of the camps had something special but Nossob is a great location.

Several nights in the Kalahari were below freezing. We woke up in the morning to frozen kettles and water bottles. I have camped in the Arctic and I’ve never been as cold as I was in the Kalahari on a couple of the nights. The days were very pleasant and we were in shorts and long sleeve shirts, but the nights…brrr!

Besides the general game and stunning birdlife -we saw about 80 species of birds and we weren’t even really birding.

To summarize what we saw for the two weeks we were in the Kalahari... The best giraffe sighting ever was one evening when we watched, mesmerised, two male giraffe fighting at sunset - dramatic.

One morning we came around a bend and a cheetah dashed across the road right in front of us. He had just killed an ostrich on the road and was starting to feed when we came upon him. We could still see steam rising from the rather dead bird in the frigid morning temperatures.

Another time we came across three lionesses feeding on an adult gemsbok. There are more gemsbok in the park than any other large mammal. Apparently there are about 28,000 in the park. They are magnificent and very photogenic.

Bat-eared foxes and jackals are common. As a matter of fact jackals have moved to our 'not so favourite' of animals list after they stole our day cooler off our picnic table in camp the one night. It was our fault really. We had been warned that the jackals in the area are very bold and we turned our backs for a minute and they swiped it. Our neighbour told us that a couple of nights earlier two jackals teamed up and stole someone’s #3 potjie pot off the fire, full of chicken stew. (A potjie is a cast iron three-legged pot to cook over fires that is an essential of cooking over bush fires and a #3 is big enough for a stew that feeds a family of six.)

Tali found it somewhat entertaining. I was irritated because it contained large amounts of our very precious provisions of dried fruit and biltong (dried kudu) from Cape Town. Lorne called in his tracking skills and eventually did find the cooler. At least they left us our salt and pepper, pocket knife and a jar of peanut butter. My only comment was that I hope they got diarrhoea from all the dried fruit, a comment that was regurgitated by Tali a few days later when we saw a jackal and she told me, “I think he has diarrhoea because he’s a thief”.

We saw tons of springbok, some very large herds, and blue wildebeest. The animals were not as congregated as they usually are because the rains were so good this year that there was still water and food in the dunes, very unusual at this time of year. When the water and the food in the dunes dries up, the animals all come to the two riverbeds in the park and drink at the waterholes, so you are able to see enormous herds of animals.

The two main roads, which are really just improved sand tracks, in the park are basically in the two riverbeds and normally, at this time of the year, you drive from one waterhole to the next along those two roads and you see everything. This year was different, which was great, because it’s been a while since there were such good rains there. We even got a few sprinkles one afternoon, which was a shock, and very rare this time of year.

We saw loads of tsama melon in the dunes, which was fantastic. We’ve never seen so many tsamas, but they are a sign that there have been good rains. Gemsbok and several desert animals eat tsamas for the moisture, and they are one of the only true moisture sources for the true Bushman. We decided to pick one and taste it. 'Nothing to write home about' was the conclusion, even though we are writing anyway! Of course, our benchmark for comparison is fantastic South African melons – a bit unfair.

We saw huge flocks of sandgrouse, especially in the morning at the water holes. They have a very distinct call and it’s one of those sounds that takes you back to the Kalahari.

We saw a martial eagle eating a freshly killed yellow mongoose on a dead tree right next to the road in beautiful afternoon light. It posed there for us for the whole afternoon. It was spectacular, one of those magic moments in the bush.

We spent a day and a half with a pair of mating lions, who, very conveniently, decided that right next to one of the roads in the park was the place. It was brilliant. We blew through more than a few rolls of film at that sighting.

At one point at 10h30 in the morning the male stood up right next to our car, within four or five meters, and roared. It was magnificent and very unusual for lions to roar in full daylight hours. The same male also decided the stoneguard on the front of our truck needed a nibble. So we have a toothmark to remember him by.

That night his coalition partner was roaring farther up the riverbed near our camp, perhaps trying to find him. We were sitting at our table having dinner bundled up in all the clothes we had and we were listening as this lion got closer and closer. We were camped at the edge of the camp at the fence, about 15 m away, and there was no light outside of the light from the candles at our table and the light from our lantern.

The sound was getting so close, it was starting to vibrate in our stomachs, so our neighbor pulled out his million candle watt spotlight and in the beam was this most magnificent blond-maned Kalahari lion standing just on the other side of the fence, which all of a sudden seemed quite inadequate. He roared another couple of times before he turned away and kept walking down the riverbed. Lorne was holding Tali as she was obviously scared, but we were all mesmerized by this magnificent beast. It was another of those magic moments!

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