We just returned from camping for eight nights in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. We camped at Sunday Pan #4 and #2 and Passarge Valley campsite #3. More to follow on that, but first I’ll make some notes for anyone planning a trip. Feel free to skip down to the adventures below if the next couple of paragraphs are boring. 🙂
For those who might be interested, we entered and exited the reserve via Rakops where we overnighted at the Rakops River Lodge, an ok stay, but a lot of the negative reviews we read are merited. The staff wasn’t very friendly or helpful. Wifi was weak and not reliable. The beer was expensive, but the pool next to the outdoor bar was nice and a great relief from the heat. I think the camping there is likely nicer than the chalets. We were both happy with the campsite itself. We had a picnic table and a shade tree. There was a large boma for a fire and sitting out in the evening. We had a clothes line and, for us, the shared ablutions were almost part of our campsite. A negative for in most cases, but it was great for us because we were the only ones there. The ablutions were very tidy with two big sinks outside for washing up. All in all, not a bad stop for the night, just stick with camping and be entirely self sufficient with your own water, food, etc. Bring beer, unless you want to fork out a much of money at the bar, but use the pool. It’s nice. The great thing about staying here is that puts you just a few kilometers from the CKGR entrance to the Matswere gate, so saves you a lot of time for a long and challenging drive ahead.
It takes about two hours to get from the Matswere gate once you turn off the main road. The two spoor route isn’t marked, but most of the trail is obvious with many short go around options as you drive, especially around some of the rough crevices on the main track. It’s a bit confusing at the beginning which track to track because there appear two be three options. Take the middle one that goes straight on and check your GPS a few times to make sure you’re heading toward the gate. Be forewarned, the road is roughly corrugated in places and it has some pockets of moderately deep sand. There are plenty of places where you have big ruts and deep crevices to negotiate. Often the go around option is better, if there is one; though this is not always the case. The only real problem you’ll have getting through in your 4×4 (be sure to deflate your tires and switch to 4W drive) is if it rains. We decided if we got rain and pools of standing water, we’d probably walk the water to check the track unless we were sure of the evenness of the path. You really don’t want to hit one of those big crevices or slip or tip or get stuck, so we’d suggest walking first to check before driving. If there’s no water (it was dry as a bone when we were just there), the drive is no more difficult than what you find in some of the other big, remote reserves like Mabua, particularly the road from Hukuntse to Mabua, which might in fact be harder. The only exception might be a few moderate challenges around the bigger cuts in the road as you head into the Deception Pan area from the gate. Still, it’s entirely doable.
Now the adventures…
It was rough, but thoroughly worth it. We spent our first 4 nights in Sunday Pan (campsite #4). The heat never let up and each day was somewhere above 100. We used our spray bottle a lot!
The Kalahari is such a beautiful place of extremes—hot/cold, survival or not. With the vastness of the reserve and the lack of water (it seemed the rains only came early in the wet season but didn’t continue into the hottest months). We visited the waterholes near each of our campsites. Both were little more than mud and puddles. We saw very few animals, but the ones we did see were wonderful to just sit and watch. We saw a lot of birds! Richard has become the honorary birder between us! I have many new insects to identify—metallic green beetles, a few of which were always in our tent each morning; buzzing beetles with yellow spots, a favorite hornbill breakfast it seems. There were lots of moths. The big brown ones were annoying and we always seems to have a few in the tent. They would flap at my face and wake me up, as would their batting against the canvas.
One of our camping days we took a drive to Deception Pan. Richard spotted two lions sleeping under the tree in one of the small tree islands that dot the expansive stretches of the open pans. They were sleepy, but we got to just sit and spend some time watching them.
We caught sight of jackals, one eating a bit of meat he had down by the Sunday pan watering hole.
We saw bat-eared foxes as we drove to our next campsite in Passarge Valley (campsite #3), but they quickly took off. I only got a picture of one’s rear.)
The Kalahari was surprisingly quiet each night. We slept with our screens unzipped in the tent (hence, insects already mentioned). The nighttime air was cool and chilly by the early morning before sunrise. Then, of course, the day grew to temperatures 100+ and you’d grow lethargic.
I didn’t do a lot of laundry because we only had the water we carried. We had stocked up on drinking water (thank goodness, because you needed a lot to stay hydrated!). We brought a lot of beer, so with our refrigerator we had some cold refreshment in the shade of a tree during the hottest part of the day.
The tough days (and nights) usually involved the wind (or worry about our refrigerators working overtime and the funny on/off noises they started to make in the night—Richard was concerned enough to go out one night to check on them and our battery power). The wind was relentless. We had gusts that were probably 40mph. You could hear the gust coming before a arrived. During the day, the sand would blow with the gusts and the dust devils. Our eyes were sore and the inside of the rig was covered in fine sand. One night we had non-stop wind that tore at our tent flaps. Neither of us got any sleep from the incessant smacks and loud bangs of the canvas against the canvas. We almost were going to give up and leave the next morning, but we held on. The weather didn’t get better and the environment was still unforgiving, but the beauty of such a remote natural place was worth all the challenges.
We only did a few drives, partly it’s just exhausting setting up and taking down the tent in the heat, and partly it was just nice to sit under a shade tree and watch and listen to the small things. The drives were mostly sand tracks within the reserve and a mixture of thick bush and scrub to vast grassy pans. On our drive to Passarge Valley, Richard nobly negotiated the ruts and deep gullies and dodged the squirrel holes. The thorn scrub endless scraped like nails on a chalkboard against the sides of the rig. Remarkably the Land Cruiser’s paint came out relatively unscathed, incredible given the amount of bush we passed.
It was a 2 hr drive from Passarge back to Sunday Pan for our last night and another 2 hours from Sunday Pan to the gate the next morning. The drive from Sunday Pan to the gate and then another 2hrs to the main road was the usual—sometimes sandy, sometimes corrugated two-spoor bush trail, riddled with dried mud gorges, breaks in the hard sand and undulating dips, but we finally made it to our next destination: Boteti River Camp. I’ll post a bit on that soon, just to let you know how it was. It was a one night stopover for us on the way to our current location at Elephant Sands. As soon as we have a better Wifi connection I’ll post the amazing elephant video we have. I’ll record more today before we leave for Chobe tomorrow.
I’m posting this without much editing or proofing. I’ll edit later if I missed something!