Nissan Patrol 4x4 (Africa)

Some coffee break reading for you...a recent trip to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, entering/exiting via ZA Tweerivieren and camping mainly in the Botswana camps (unfenced).

Sleepovers:
Rooiputs (Bots) x2
Matopi (Bots on Boso Trail) x1
Lesho (Bots) x3
Mabua (Bots) x3
Mosomane (Bots on Mabua 4x4 Trail) x1
Nossob (ZA) x1
Two Rivers (Bots) x1

Our trip planning began with a family feud on who’s Patrol to take...the wife’s TB42 or my TB45. Wife won & I knew there were going to be breakdowns. First thing I did was plan to rent a Sat phone (Sat4Rent – fantastic service). Local mechanic returned the troll with the car not smoking for the first time ever...but unfortunately also “improved’ things so that the ignition doesn’t switch off the engine (have to stall the car). LA Sport installed the Jerry can brackets wrong, and no one was able to figure out how the old school Aux fuel tank, that we’ve never used, actually worked. Oh boy. Second thing I did was coordinate recovery gear with our trip buddies in their Hilux.

The day came to hit the road. We finished packing 10 minutes before leaving and I bravely ventured out loud that the 10cm clearance in the rear wheel well was going to become a problem. Hmmmm. Drove from the EC to Britstown in the NC for a dark arrival but quaint stay at the Transkaroo Country Lodge. Restaurant buffet gets weighed out and 3 different meats were augmented by potatoes. No water in town but it started pumping later at night....which made a terrible noise in our room and we moved rooms with our 5L water-filled bucket for flushing the toilet, in tow. But it beat the place in De Aar that we had to cancel the day before leaving...that tannie forgot to let us know the restaurant would be closed (and it was one of my 2 requirements before hitting the desert...the other was a hot shower since we hadn’t had municipal water at home for 2 weeks). The De Aar spot promptly blamed us for not checking with them sooner if their restaurant would be open, so we were happy to cancel and take our money elsewhere, and booked Britstown during the packing chaos.

Next day in Upington we popped into 4x4 Megaworld after a couple phone calls on the road, to see if they could fix our collapsed rear coil problem. They referred us to 4x4 Safari Center, who spent the better half of a day to convince the wife to blow R10k on new rear coils and shocks. Eventually parts got ordered from Johies for next day arrival while we visited Augrabies (where we noticed the rear exhaust bracket was loose and I ended up doing a bush repair in the Sanparks parking lot). We stayed at Augrabies Falls Lodge & Camp, and their campwide generator plus own water treatment plant for the borehole make this a repeat stopover for next time we come. The food was excellent.

Next day came and after stopping for 8 bags of firewood, the remaining rear coil said “cheers”. Miraculously the parts arrived on time at the 4x4 shop, and they dropped us off for last minute supply shopping and a rendevouz with our travel buddies at the Wimpy, while the troll got fixed. All went well and we arrived close to dark at Tweerivieren. We checked in at both ZA & Bots desks, and promptly wandered out the wrong door into Bots on the outside of the park...the official informed us he would have to arrest us now, since we entered Bots without passports...his deadpan gave us a few nervous seconds before all parties unspokenly agreed that it was too late in the day for paperwork, and we were escorted back to ZA...where we informed him that he was now on the ZA side and we should be arresting him. Even Stevens.

We arrived at Rooiputs to someone camping on our site. He ended up leaving for some other site by dragging his massive tent attached to the vehicle through the grass and dust. I was picking up makeshift tentpegs (25cm threaded bolt-screw) in the desert for the following 20 minutes to avoid punctures. Eish, some people. That night we heard lions roar but didn’t see them. Jackals were everywhere and wandered freely within 5 meters of us sitting in camp. There were lion tracks within 20 meters the next morning. The next night I was still defending my “negative energy” in predicting that the distant storm would soon hit us, when all of a sudden people were chasing after tent poles in the dark and hanging onto roof top tents (no rain though, only wind and thunder). Rest of the trip people listened to my sage weather predictions.
The leg from Rooiputs-Nossob-Matopi was a long day; we briefly stopped for pics of cheetahs surveying the world from the top of dunes and lions gorged from a kill the day before. Fuel consumption was obviously something we tried to minimize so the wife refused to drive in 4wd on the Sanparks roads despite my protestations about road degredation. Once we went to 4wd in the sand of the wilder Boso Trail, our consumption plummeted to 3.3L/km. Whaaaat????? OK, guess we’re doing that in 2x4 as well! Out of interest: We ended up doing maybe 60km in 4wd, during the whole trip! We had filled up petrol at Nossob and then eventually used our 4 Jerry cans to fill up on the way back to Nossob (it included a couple game drives in the larger Mabua area). Anyway, On the single track two way trail one ends up hoping for the best as you crest the dunes, and sure enough we encountered one traffic convoy against us. Fortunately we crested the dune maybe 30 seconds before they reached it, so everyone met between two dunes. That night we stayed at Matopi on the trail, where we got brushed by an electrical storm that mercifully did not hit us full on...sleeping on the roof, 40cm away from 4 Jerry cans of petrol under a tall tree is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night. We had the obligatory jackals visiting and lion tracks in the road the next morning.
Arrival at our Lesho camp was slightly disappointing since it was clear there was no water for either us or the animals at the pan’s borehole. Apparently the pump had been broken for a long time. Nonetheless, that camp produced our best predator interactions for the trip. We heard leopard close by while sitting around the fire. Brown hyena visited us around the fire, and spotted came while we were in the tents. On the last morning there, we woke up to lions roaring down the road and clearly walking towards us. We jumped out of the tents and packed up in record time to avoid getting trapped in camp the whole day. Wife kept a lookout & when I started tying the ladder to the roof and asked if I have 5 minutes, she replied “more like 2”. As we got into the car, the first lion rounded the bush next to us :) . Lekker! The antics of the pride that we observed for the next 10 minutes, before they cleared out again, was fantastic. But shame, we had left a bit of water out for the camp squirrels that freely mingle with us, and the lions were licking out the remaining drops like it was an unending ocean. I really felt for them. The veld this time of year is bone dry and it was HOT. Oh yes, on day 2 at that camp I confirmed my suspicion that the exhaust had developed a roaring hole. Turns out a silencer and pipe had separated at the join and another bracket had bitten the dust. I can tell you what the definition of fun is not: A hot day in the desert under a car trying to fix the unfixable when your only goal that day was really to wash your clothes and stare into the distance. That gluedevil exhaust putty lasted 10km in the end (the bracing straps held at least).
The Mabua camp yielded no predators, however the local small time camp critter species & their inter dynamics changed. That yielded hours of fun. It’s quite interesting watching the pecking order between the species. We decided that the guinea fowl were the biggest gangsters at that camp. They came running down the road to our camp every morning in their dozens. The mongoose (geese? gooses? goose? the plural escaped many a learned man) were the most like man’s best friend and I had one chill next to me in the shade constantly. The squirrels were voted the dumbest cuties in the bush....you can put water down for them but they’ll be more interested in trying to eat your chair. I have no idea where they get their water intake from. I must say our camp did have a cool owl whose occupation seemed to be modeling for scenic photographs. It kept moving between dead trees and the A-frame, swooping off periodically to grab something that was stirred up by our lights and activity. Once as I was packing up for the night, it landed on our rooftop tent, and seemed unperturbed by my climbing up & down the ladder. We had a few game drives from camp to check out oryx, blue wildebeest, and bataleurs. But on the whole we were disappointed; the guidebooks always gush about Mabua pan itself, but I suspect that refers to the hayday of functioning water pumps, or perhaps the rain season.
On the exclusive Mabua 4x4 trail back to Nossob, near Malatso we saw the largest herd of eland I have ever seen. Immediately we gauged that the wildlife here saw fewer people, because they were clearly more skittish as they thundered of into the distance. This ended up being true for the whole trail. The first section to a lunch spot overlooking an unknown pan was, however, fairly boring driving with sparse game. At the lunch spot however on the hill however, we picked up lion tracks and followed them almost right to the Mosomane camp, so we enjoyed that section of trail which also yielded more wildlife along the way.
The Mosomane camp has no facilities at all and is a beautiful camp on the edge of the pan. That night we noticed a light about 500m into the bush that raised suspicions. We eliminated stars or a road, and after observing it for a while we concluded it was a flashlight or headlamp. After a few minutes of our initial loud commotion discussing it, it seemed to disappear as if the guys it belonged to noticed us and turned it off. We also heard what sounded like a rhythmic noise which could have been unrelated, but we imagined it sounded like someone sharpening a blade. We ofcourse suspected poachers (pangolin?) because we are in the middle of literally nowhere and this is too far off the road for illegal 4x4 wild campers. It gave us a bit of a rattle, and I decided to call it in to the park via Sat phone. I only had a Tweerivieren emergency number, so I called at about 21:00 and reported it; they asked I report to Nossob instead since we are in the Botswana side of the park, but I asked them to call Nossob or radio it in for us. I called back 10 minutes later and was told they are having trouble reaching Nossob, but took down my details for check in the next day at our Nossob sleepover. (We ended up having to fill out an incident report at Nossob the next day). The rest of the night was uneventful as we burned through the remainder of our bags of wood, talking story and ignoring whoever was potentially near us.
The first half of next section of the trail was the highlight of the trip as far as I’m concerned. Lekker dune driving, beautiful scenery, plenty & skittish game, and just a generally lekker vibe crossing many unknown pans. At one, the remains of an aluminium structure was spread through the bush like the wind or a pack of rabid Ratel tore it apart. We also drove the biggest dunes of the trip, and where the Hilux bowed out for a detour of the biggest sandiest one, the wife crawled the troll through in Low Range after the 3rd try. I was just thankful that the low slung roaring exhaust survived the deep track. The last section of the trail was more grassy and a bit more boring. Then suddenly it was over, and we were at Nossob, where I was glad we were camping in the “poor” section, since the premium one looked a bit like a concrete parking lot from afar. How strange. Nossob was the only fenced camp we stayed in, yet it was here that a jailbreak jackal stole my leather gloves next to the braai!

Pics & Post continued below....

Pics & Post continued:
A note on tires during the trip: I was impressed by the sand performance of the Dunlop ATG3 3-plies I’ve commented on elsewhere in the forum on previous occasion. They bore the load well and handled sand better than I expected, although granted we only climbed one major dune with uncompacted sand. We ran them 1.2bar in front and 1.4 bar rear, cold, for sand. And 1.7 front and 2 rear for corrugations. No punctures.
Next day we ducked into Tweerivieren’s Sanparks auto workshop to see if they could do something about the exhaust. They informed us that the section was too fragile to weld and that the silencer box was damaged inside as well, so our best bet was Upington to replace it. After checking out our Two Rivers campsite we decided to head to the restaurant back at Tweerivieren for an early dinner (the Bots officials told us without exception we had to be back across the river by 18:00. So we told the tannies to hurry up with food and since we were a little miffed that we had to be back by 6pm without a gate blocking our way, we enquired with Sanparks if we could make a booking and camp there if we missed our curfew. They said no problem, come just before 6 to reception if we weren’t going to make it, and then do the short notice booking. We ended up making the curfew and the tannies produce great food in record time. Headsup if you ever get the vetkoek...it’s enough for 2-3 people! We chugged 2 bottles of wine and headed back to the wild side. Since Two Rivers is outside the game fence, we didn’t expect to have any scares around the fire, but kept one light on anyway for the odd hyena. We were surprised by a feeling mouse, and then an african wild cat skirting the perimeter. By this time the nights had become unbearably cold in bed and were looking forward to going home.

In Upington we had the exhaust repaired at Fit It/Dunlop and the roaring troll stopped turning heads. The drive back was tedious and boring, and required much concentration with all the big trucks on the N10 and the potholes they create. We arrived in the dark in Hanover for a sleepover and Krummel pap & kastaings for breakfast. By the time we hit Bedford-Grahamstown, I was already in a bad mood again. Those roads in and around town are literally the WORST in the country. I can believe people die on those roads and at a minimum cars are regularly written off in up to 70cm deep potholes spanning both lanes without warning. We were greeted at town limits by the two tires and a tree in the middle of the road that a good samaritan had used to warn of two large holes (this has been there for months if not years). Who is liable for creating unsafe driving conditions? Back at home we were greeted by potholes, loadshedding and news that the town’s overflowing dams were still unable to pump water. The truck that removed the pump for fixing after 5 weeks of dysfunction had slid into a ditch above the dam and had been stuck there for 4 days with no plan. I miss the desert and the roar of the troll already.

Lovely report thanks Dion.

Came back one week before Covid striked, think it is time to plan another trip! Tx for the report!!!!