Change In Plans

Greetings from Twee Rivieren, at the southern end of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. The park combines two national parks, in South Africa and Botswana, creating a huge desert wilderness area. I will try to incorporate some maps when I am not using my BlackBerry. “Kgalagadi” is the original (and now official) spelling of “Kalahari.”

This short post is about our first day and night here.

We drove about 200 kilometers from Tswalu, entirely over dirt roads. Including the two ‘towns’ we passed, we saw a total of about five motor vehicles, and three donkey carts, on the drive. We were glad to be in a new and reliable 4×4. Breaking down in the 100-degree heat and blazing sun would have been unamusing at best.

India and I stayed at the Twee Rivieren camp site nearly ten years ago, when the park was still just the Kalahari Gemsbok Park. Without going into too much detail, we have reason to believe that Zola was conceived here, a belief that we memorialized by making his full name ‘Zola Atticus Kalahari Baird.’ We explained a little of this to Zola yesterday, but it raised more questions than we were ready to discuss.

Last night we stayed in a desert camp called Kielie Krankie, about 45 dirt-road kilometers in from the park entrance at Twee Rivieren. “Kielie Krankie” means “almost sick” in Afrikaans. Not an auspicious place name for a family that just spent a month in India (the place).

Ten years ago, India (the person) and I saw practically no animals when we were in this park. Times have changed.

Like many South African game parks, this one features “self-drive safaris.”. This means that you rattle around on the dirt roads looking for animals. It is very democratic (ie, inexpensive) and fun.

On the drive in to Kielie Krankie, we saw hundreds of gemsbok (oryx), wildebeest, and springbok. More exciting, we found a pride of ten lions resting in the late-afternoon shade by the road.

As we watched the lions, a large herd of wildebeest ambled down the valley, about 300 meters upwind. The lions suddenly became very alert, and arrayed themselves along a low ridge to observe their potential dinner. For about an hour, we watched the lions watching the wildebeest. The confident, murderous intent of the adult lionesses was clear, although the cubs seemed to be sort of playing along. The wildebeest, meanwhile, seemed oblivious to the danger: they drank from a watering hole, they wandered aimlessly, their babies ran and played.

Unfortunately, we had to leave before the drama played itself out. We were required to be at Kielie Krankie by 7:30 pm, or be stuck sleeping in our truck. Our guess is that there are one or two fewer wildebeest in that herd this morning.

Just before we arrived at the desert camp, Zola spotted a family of bat-eared foxes coming out of their den to hunt in the twilight. They were about 150 meters off the road, on a low hillside. Excellent spot, Zola.

Kielie Krankie is an unfenced group of four small bungalows. Each is half building and half tent. The gate to each bungalow locks, and the outdoor space is a deck about two meters above a desert hillside. This is believed to be adequate protection from lions. There is a ranger, named Willem, in a fifth bungalow, and he gave us a whistle to summon him (with rifle, presumably) if we got into trouble. Wild.

As we moved into our bungalow, a huge thunderstorm was brewing in the west. As at Tswalu, it created a spectacular show of lightning and desert sunset, deep reds and blues punctuated by streaks of white.

As we were cooking dinner, the wind began to blow hellaciously. I doused our cooking fire, which was spraying embers all over the dry vegetation in the valley, and we closed all of the windows and tent flaps. A few minutes later, la deluge terrifique. The rain came down in sheets, as lightning flashed and thunder boomed. Both kids tries to be cool about it, but it was a little scary. We ate our dinner on the floor of the kitchen, with rain leaking into the bungalow all over the place.

The rain stopped after an hour, and we all dropped off to sleep. Having only two twin beds made it a tight squeeze.