🙂 Cheetah Kill! 13 individual cheetahs! Lions! Leopard!
🙁 Time flies too fast! Annoying people at Gharagab!
Friday, 17 December 2021
We were up at 05h00 at the Oyster Box in Durban with bad hangovers… Had to fly to Jhb where we worked in the lounge for a few hours before taking our flight to Upington. HOT! Spotted the solar furnace power station which always means you about to land! Car hire was a nightmare – not our usual and wrong vehicle and had to pay another £850 instead of £50 for fuel deposit!
Drove the 2 hours to Kalahari Lodge which has been nicely upgraded – very comfortable and our meal was ready for take away. Manager very sweet (and young) and proud of his job – heartwarming.
Saturday, 18 December 2021
ITINERARY: Kalahari Tented Camp (x1) – Twee Rivieren (x1) – Gharagab (x1) – Kalahari Tented Camp (x1)
We were up at 05h00 and at Twee Rivieren Gate at 05h45 BUT gate only opened at 07h00!!
So we headed back to our lodge and ate leftover steak for breakfast! Headed back and checked in at gate and took a slow drive to Kalahari Tented Camp where we were spending the night. Some interesting sightings:
Gemsbok, red breasted shrike, Black backed jackals with babies, ostrich, Tawny eagle, pale chanting goshawk, ground squirrel, wildebeest.
Then we were blessed with the first of many cheetah sightings – we had once complained that we’d been three times without a cheetah sighting – well this trip more than made up for it! We were on the Rooipits road and the only car at this sighting with a mother and four cubs on a fresh springbok kill. They were quite nervous…looking up at the eagle swooping overhead and checking. their surroundings. Cheetah Count = 5. What a great start! 🙂
We continued on our way and came across a delightful ostrich family.
They literally look like eggs on legs!!
The springbok lambs are adorable!
Secretary birds are so cool! Kori busteds are a fairly common sighting here.
Another cheetah sighting! It looked like a Mother with t a sub adult male and three very young cubs? Cheetah Count = 5+5 = 10 on day one!
We stopped at a weaver bird next – always interesting as there may be a cape cobra winding its way through the nest looking for chicks… all we found were some social weavers with their weaving material in their beaks…
We met a pair of frisky tortoises!
Stopped for lunch at Kamqua.
There were bush fires for several Kms north of Kamqua. Arrived at KTC and checked in to no. 10 with friendly manager – pool green but we still needed to cool off! Our first stay here – very comfortable and spacious tent but we do prefer the smaller unfenced camps. We chilled on the deck and read and rested and then enjoyed a delicious braai with ribs and mash and Kanonkop red watching the golden hour and were visited by numerous jackal hoping for a snack! Temperature plummeted from 35C to 22C! Great end to a great first day….
Sunday, 19 December 2021
We were up at 05h00 and packed and out of gate by 05h30.
It was to be another Cheetah day! We spotted 3 cheetah almost immediately and followed them for an hour until they went to sleep under a tree.
We then enjoyed the antics of ground squirrels and social weaver birds.
A bit more birding with some surprising spots! Wood Sandpiper, Grey headed Kingfisher, Juvenile PCG, Swallow Tail Bee Eater and Martial Eagle.
We stopped off at Kamqua and cooked brunch: eggs, bacon, banana, toast – yum!
After brunch we headed on and were interested to see a herd of giraffe staring intensely … which usually means … Predator/s! It was the same cheetah family that we spotted the day before. Mom sat up looking interested. A herd of springbok sauntered past oblivious to the danger! She and her son shot out – she was locked on to a springbok which she took down right next to our car! Death was within seconds…she dragged the body under a bush and called to her cubs who came trotting over. She left them to it for ten minutes but they were not able to tear the flesh … she did so and they started feeding….incredible. Once satiated there was lots of licking and bonding … we were one of only a handful of cars witnessing this magical sighting – just WOW!
Got chatting to a lovely couple at the kill – also SHRs… headed onwards to find another 3 cheetahs striding purposefully … over the dunes! = 13!
Meerkats scanning for birds of prey! Noisy koorhaan!
We headed to Twee Rivieren no. 30 which was the only accommodation available on this date – not our fav but has a lovely pool, shop and the ground squirrels kept us entertained!
There was a storm brewing and the skies were stunning! We had a delicious braai – with a young wild cat waiting in the wings hoping for a snack!
Monday, 20-22 December 2021: Gharagab
Ap at 05h00 for a 5h30 start at gate.
PCG and BBJ cubs …great start!
STUNNING OWL
Next up we found the Kings – simply magnificent! Slowy waking up …
The hartebeest baby was adorable. A flock of ostriches!
Stunning secretary bird
We did the obligatory drive to Unions End with lunch en route.
Our next stop was Gharagab… first stay and definitely won’t be our last! Only accessible by 4×4 track for 32Km to camp – it is as remote as you can get…divine. Erik, the camp manager has been here for 16 years! He said that the lions and cubs had been through every evening for he last few nights. The Visitor’s Book says it all… next to our hut there has been lions at the fence, a cheetah kill, leopards etc etc We could not braai the first night as the winds were too strong so we cooked inside. We had amazing thunder and lightening asleep really early! … Idyllic and peaceful – the only sound you should here is the barking geckos at night and the sound of the wild … unfortunately we had two men for neighbours who insisted on running their engines for hours at a time to charge their batteries. They are the type that cracks open their first beers at 05h00 while watching the sun rise !!! Yikes. When Paul asked them kindly to switch off at 5h000 on what happened to be their final morning as they were disturbing our peace for the 2nd day now (so why did they need to charge AGAIN?!) they were clearly annoyed and had a hissy fit after packing up with wheel spins and hooting as they left. SHAME. Other than that blemish, this is truly a haven of peace. We snoozed, read, played games, ate, snoozed, read and relaxed! Bliss. It was quite amazing watching all the social weavers, what precisely 17h00 made a united call and flew off as one big cloud, presumably back to their nests!! We saw an injured jackal but the camp manager assured us that he had survived like that for years! When we headed to the (very windy) viewing deck we spotted the resident wild cat chilling – adorable! The barking geckos can be easily seen at dusk. Birds come to drink… this is a place to sooth your soul and just get away from it all. We had a mouse in the house ho ate most of our Nik Naks!! This place is AMAZING.
Wednesday 23 December 2021
Left at 08h30 – it was already 30C by 09h00!! We headed back to KTC for our final night. We took the road less travelled back to Nossob via the termite mounds. We saw a lone hartebeest foal …no herd in sight… 🙁
Spent an hour at Polentswa water hole watching lanner falcons hunting – 0% success rate in all that time and they made an attempt every 20 seconds!!
We enjoyed a lovely sunset and braai with a visit form the jackals. They kept us awake calling all night! U at 06h00 and headed off after breakfast. Jan came to say goodbye…it felt sad to be heading off but excited t see the children!
However, KTP was not done with us yet!
A noisy hitchhiker climbed on board! He refused to leave even after we sped up! He then started alarm calling and we knew we were close to the predator! While we were photographing the lion another vehicle arrived and our hitchhiker hopped onboard and headed back in the direction we’d just come from! We wondered if he adopted this strategy all day long?!! 🙂
As we were driving to leave we again passed Lizzie, son and 4 cubs … what a fantastic trip! 🙂
