Ten days in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, sandwiched between Namibia and Botswana in the northwest corner of South Africa . . . the plan was two nights in Grootkolk Wilderness Camp, five nights in Nossob Main Camp, and two nights at Polentswa Lodge (first time). We were already four nights in, and we were desperate. To see cats, that is. Okay. Full disclosure. We’d had a brilliant sighting of a huge male leopard at the waterhole in front of our unit at Grootkolk, early in the morning. Sadly no photos to tell the tale . . . But back to the lions.
The absolute worst part of Kgalagadi (for me, anyway) is the absolute FOMO that fills you from head to toe when you constantly see lions (or cheetah, or leopard) appearing in those infuriating little red / black / whatever, magnetic squares on the Sightings board.
Gravel Road Adventures (with our new magnetic logos displayed) on the road again . . .
. . . driving into those magnificent Kalahari Desert sunsets, or sunrises, as the case may be.
So . . . we were at Nossob, third day there (after two days at Grootkolk), and feeling despondent at our lack of cat sightings. In the late afternoon Hirsh just happened to be under THAT tree . . . the only spot to get phone signal . . . when he heard someone tell someone else about three lion strolling around just 5 kilometres out of the camp. You’ve never seen anyone move faster. Binoculars, cameras, and we were through the gate with an hour to spare till closing time.
In the footsteps of a rather large male lion. If you look closely you will see one of the females sitting on a slope beyond the vehicle.
He really was a Meneer, with battle scars galore. You can tell it’s late afternoon by the light. But the sighting was magnificent anyway.
The interaction was classic. They’d obviously been mating earlier and he approached the female to try his luck one more time. As he slowly loped towards her, she greeted him with a gleam in her eyes, then gave him an almighty klap across the jaw with a massive paw. He snarled. She carried herself to a nearby spot with supreme elegance and a cat smirk, and settled gazing out like a Sphinx.
Air of resignation in the one, languid sleepiness in the other.
So we got our lion. We got a lot more too. Kgalagadi isn’t only about cats (believe it or not). There were truly enormous herds of springbok, more than we’ve seen in a long while, sometimes in their hundreds.
At left a Bateleur Eagle with his resplendent black and red markings, at right a juvenile Pale Chanting Goshawk.
He is so beautiful he deserves a full portrait all on his own, a Martial Eagle.
This was one of the most fascinating sights we’ve seen in animal behaviour. It was during the hottest part of the day, 36 or 37 degrees C (in August! It’s meant to be spring!), the heat was like a furnace, and there in the middle of the grasslands, away from any tree or the slightest hint of shade, was a perfect circle of ostriches. 40 to 50 of them. What a sight! A mass of necks like periscopes testing out the surroundings. Was this some weird kind of body temperature control? Every now and again, an ostrich would lift and wave a languid feathered wing. But seriously not enough to cool any bird beside it. It didn’t make any sense that this tight knot of body heat could be a form of cooling mechanism.
So I asked one of the rangers back at camp. She was as perplexed as I was, she said ostriches usually cool themselves by holding out their wings and standing still with their beaks open. Which makes sense. Her view was that it was a protective measure, as if they’d felt threatened by something. Could there have been lions nearby? Highly curious.
And once we’d broken the non-cat-sighting spell, lions appeared several times out of the gloaming. We followed this lady down the road till she got to her destination, one of the waterholes early one morning.
So photogenic with their colouring and their streepies . . . and we’re so proud of our two-legged Springboks right now that these bokke deserve another look-see.
And to finish off with a magnificent Kalahari sunset, taken at the rustic Polentswa Lodge on the Botswana side of the Transfrontier Park. To read about that experience and a different take on Kgalagadi, visit my blog Quirky Girl Traveller, click here.