Back in August we were having dinner with my parents when my dad mentioned that he really wanted to go to the Kgalagadi. But my mom doesn’t handle heat very well. So my wife (who is also scared of the heat) says that my dad and I should go. For my sin in choosing the wrong career, I am basically forced to take the bulk of my leave during the December school holidays, so we had to jump quickly and to some extent we could not pick and choose the best camps.
Fortunately, we were able to book three nights at Rooiputs and two nights at Two Rivers (note, not Twee Rivieren), which suited us very well.
The two of us left Joburg at around 4AM on the morning of the 14th December under threatening skies. Al went swimmingly until we hit Kuruman, where my old banger, usually totally reliable, decided to just die. 15 minutes of anxious fiddling later it magically started up again, but before leaving Kuruman I purchased a replacement coil as insurance (the coil felt very hot). As a result of this and some excellent conversation and a first-class brunch with my second cousin, as well as the car getting progressively sicker we arrived at Twee Rivieren rather later than expected. After signing in we proceeded on to Rooiputs where we would be spending our first three nights, but not before unpacking our cameras.
Stopping at Rooiputs waterhole to photograph a Gemsbok, somebody drove up and said there was a lion under a bush just a couple of hundred meters away. So we went haring off to find it, and indeed a beautiful male lion was soon found.
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Unfortunately, the sun had already dropped behind a dune, so we headed off to campsite no.1, which turned out to be a no.1 camp, and very soon we had the tent pitched, and the food heating (we have developed a habit of taking a cooked meal for the first night as we are invariably tired after a long drive, in this case it was leftover sheep’s offal, a favourite delicacy of ours) to the accompaniment of a magnificent sunset (which I was too late to capture) and the manic barking of thousands of geckos. As an encore, the lion roared us to sleep.
The next morning we were up at five out of the camp at five thirty. A solitary Springbuck ram was waiting for us at the waterhole, standing guard over his domain, as was the ubiquitous Jackal. General game is quite common in the riverbeds, particularly in the early morning and late afternoon, and we saw a lot of raptors as well. It was also evident that some rain had already fallen, with some small puddles of water in the road between Kij Kiy and Melkvlei. But close to Melkvlei we came across a very sad sight: a very emaciated lioness was lying in the road, drinking from one of the puddles. There were already a couple of jackal hanging around, and three or four vultures relaxing in the trees.
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Shortly, two more lion appeared, one a youngster, the other a slightly older male. The male had an injured eye and a wound on its’ back, while the cub looked fine until it jogged, when it kept one paw in the air. A Spotted Hyena arrived after a few minutes and circled to approach the lioness, then noticed the other two lions and decided to keep its’ distance. However, it stayed in the area and was obviously really looking forward to lunch…
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Driving south after brunch, the car died again. I tried fitting the new coil but that did not solve the problem. Eventually I asked a passer-by to give us a tow back to Twee Rivieren in the hope that there was a mechanic there. We were fortunate in that there was. With his assistance, and a phone call to Grootseun we decided that it was indeed the coil. The problems were two-fold, and as always caused by not keeping things standard. The first was that whoever had fitted the dual battery system had moved the coil to the side of the wheelwell, (rather than the top), and in this location it was very close to the exghaust, and secondly a previous owner had bridged out the coil resistor. The correct Nissan coil (which I had fitted about a year ago) is designed to work at a lower voltage, and this voltage reduction is accomplished by the resistor, and as a result of the resistor being bridged out, the coil was overheating. However, when the resistor was re-activated, the car started but immediately died. So the reason the resistor was bridged out is that it was bridged out because it was blown. The reason the car still started up is that there is a secondary circuit designed to bridge out the resistor when starting the car to obviate the voltage drop caused by the current draw of the starter. The new coil was an incorrect type and would not work at all.
So we re-installed the damaged coil, but in a different location further from the exhaust.
Midday was spent in the same pastime as most of the wildebeest in the Kalahari: hiding under a shady tree. Later in the afternoon, at Rooiputs waterhole, we watched three Gemsbok queuing behind… two secretary birds, who were waiting for… a Tawny. The bloody-minded eagle took at least half an hour to finish drinking. In the end it flew off, but by then the Gemsbok had given up and charged off into the dunes. I was starting to think the Wildebeest had competition in the madness stakes in these parts. We also had the privilege of watching a Pale Chanting Goshawk hunting (unfortunately unsuccessfully) on the way to Kij Kiy.
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It took us quite long to spot the lion resting on the dune above Kiy Kiy, but fortunately we had been entertaining ourselves photographing the pigeons drinking until he woke up, had a good scratch and then ambling down for a drink. The lions around here certainly know when the tourists have to leave to make it back to camp before gate-time!
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Mag ons ons kenniskry met lekkerkry aanhoukry.
