Kamping in the Kalahari!

This weekend I went adventuring on a camping trip into the Kalahari desert. Our guide picked us up on Saturday morning and we drove about 3 hours north to the Khutse Game Reserve.

The landscape changes dramatically when you get farther towards the Kalahari. While it is not the spectacular sand mountains that you see in the Namibian parts of the desert, the entire place is fine white sand with tall grasses and scattered trees. Everything is a light tan/yellow/ or pale green color and the place looks quite barren and desolate. On the ride up I also saw more of traditional pastoral life of the Batswana. This area is where one of the women at work has her "Cattle post", which is where the family's cattle are kept and graze. It is a very poor and remote area and herds of goat and cattle, along with boys riding donkeys bareback were some of the things we saw out the window.

When we got there we quickly set up our lion-proof tents and made camp. After a quick lunch we went on a game drive. We drove down to the water hole and on the way we saw many different types of birds, sprinkbok, other types of antellope, and ostriches. When we got to the water hole we saw a pride of lions that had just killed a giraffe that morning. The lionesses were lounging under a tree - completely stuffed from eating there kill. We couldn't get as good of a look at the male lion because he was still in the grass guarding the dead giraffe. The family of giraffes was still there too! Apparently they thought it was safe because the lions already ate and wouldn't hunt them too. There was even a baby and we got very close, it was amazing!

That night, after watching a beautiful sunset, we had a very filling dinner/dessert and stayed close to the fire. The Kalahari is FREEZING at night because its a desert and when the sun goes down the heat disappears. (temperature - about 35! ah!) Actually sleeping wasn't as bad as I thought it would be (outward bound was much worse). We had bedrolls, comforters, and extra blankets, in addition to the sweatshirt, fleece, sweatpants, and scarf I was wearing so I was actually quite toasty.

This morning we woke up early to watch the sunrise, which was amazing. Then we went on an early morning game drive. It was slightly anti-climatic at first. It seems as though most of the animals were doing what we wanted to be - sleeping! But then we ened up seeing more ostriches & springbok, some pretty cute ground squirrels, leopard tracks, a big golden eagle, and another giraffe family. This time there were 8 of them and we got even closer because they were standing right in the middle of the road. It felt kind of like being in Jurassic Part because they're such huge, bizarre but beautiful animals!


After a huge breakfast back at camp we embarked, covered in dust and sand, on the 3 hour drive back to Gabs, half of which was on a rather bumpy dirt/sand road. I got a lot of reading done!

Now I'm finally clean and ready to sleep in a real bed, but it was a great weekend!