WELL I managed a good sleep thanks to trusty phenergan (I only took half so I could still get up without struggle at 5:30am). Despite some more noisy neighbours (the curse continues), we both managed to get to sleep pretty quickly – I am pretty sure it was before 8pm! After waking up boiling the previous night I of course dialled down the warmth but that bit me on the bum because I then woke up cold! Bloody unpredictable weather!
We were becoming a well-oiled machine after two mornings already so we managed to have everything packed up and ready to go (complete with hot choc and coffee) for 6:28am! Flaunting the rules, we left those two minutes early, hoping to run into the lovely leopard at Deception Valley from the previous day. No such luck, and after we checked the valley very quickly we turned back around and headed to Sunday Pan. Today we had to drive to Phokoje, and we chose to take the long road around so that we could explore Passarge Valley. From the sightings board it looked like Sunday Pan was the place to be for lions as well as to a lesser extent cheetah. Sounded good to us! We were basically looking for lions and cheetah since we managed to check leopard and caracal off on our first day (just to remind you of that again)!
The grass was crazy long for much of the drive to Sunday Pan so we didn’t really expect to see much, but just before we reached the pan we managed to bump into THREE CHEETAHS ON THE ROAD! I am not even joking. Kalahari, you are on fire. The lovely mum and two young girls were clearly on the hunt, as mummy attempted to get a bird but failed miserably. We hung out with them for AGES as they meandered down the road, playing and at one point rolling around. It was so awesome. Once again we were the only car for the entire time! I have to admit, for predators it was rivalling our trip to Kgalagadi and definitely beating Kruger for quality.
After they ended up walking into the thick stuff we decided to get going as we had a really long trip through Passarge Valley. Nothing much was doing at Sunday Pan waterhole (though perhaps the three cheetahs had been there earlier) and after a short detour accidentally gate crashing someone’s Sunday Pan campsite as they were packing up, we eventually found our way to the road to Passarge Valley! It was getting a little late but I still held out some hope because the sightings board at Matswere gate had indicated that Passarge Valley was also pretty productive so far this month with all three types of big cats. I guess it is pretty big and also has a waterhole, so it makes sense. Anyway we wanted to stop and cook our brunch at one of the campsites but the first one we went to happened to have a huge colony set up with some tour operator. One of the guys came over to us quite confused and asked us if we wanted to camp. YES. We want to camp at your campsite, which already has about 50 tents, a full-blown kitchen, bathroom tents and eating areas set up. You must vacate immediately! We apologised profusely and went on… 15km to the next campsite. Van was already stressing that it may also be occupied, but we decided if that was the case we would simply stop by the side of the road somewhere because we had never been told that was not allowed!
Luckily it was vacant and it turned out to be an awesome campsite with a great view over the pan – definitely one of the better campsites we have come across, albeit not nearly as much privacy from the road (not that it matters since nobody really drives past EVER). Van spent a good hour trying to sort out the car and the bothersome water tank that kept malfunctioning while I for once cooked our breakfast. The egg and bacon rolls were not quite as delicious as the day before but still good (not sure if it was my poorer cooking skills or just the fact the rolls were older?). I spent some time watching the resident squirrel family who were really quite entertaining… attacking each other for various food and doing all manner of strange things. I think they need to do a documentary on these things!
Finally it was time to go and we were on our way again, not really expecting to see much given it was already midday. It was only about an hour later when Van yelled ‘LIONS!’ and I looked over to see two lovely male lions standing up by the road. KALAHARI GODS, I WORSHIP YOU! Are you even kidding? We had checked off all the major cats plus caracal and bat-eared fox within 2 days here! We hung out with the two beautiful boys for a little while before they obviously got sick of us and wandered over to another tree further away. Cue to leave. Wondering what on earth we would see next!!?
Nothing much for quite a while, when we eventually found Passarge waterhole not much was going on beside a few Oryx but we did get pretty excited down the road when we spotted TWO HONEY BADGERS ON THE ROAD! Sadly they were a bit quick for good photos, but it was one of the things I was hoping to see here. It is so strange the way the animals here seem to be quite active even in the middle of the day? Lions moving about at 1pm, bat-eared foxes at all hours, honey badgers at 2pm… I only wish we had this type of luck in the middle of the day in Kruger!
The roads here were not as good, very overgrown with crazy bushes scraping the car – we were glad it wasn’t ours! A couple of times Van even offroaded around the road to avoid the sharp bushes. Some of the roads are bad too as you can see that even 4x4s would have gotten stuck back when it was muddy.
The rest of the afternoon was relatively uneventful other than one lone bat-eared fox, a jackal or two and the usual plains game suspects. We managed to find our campsite by about 4:30pm and quickly found out the long drop toilet was in a very sad state (Van literally almost threw up). So bushes for us I guess! To be honest I actually didn’t realise there were long drop toilets at all of these campsites, so I am not totally devastated. The shower was in the same place here so Van ended up setting our ‘solar’ (which doesn’t work) shower under the tree in the middle of the campsite! It felt so weird to be showering in the middle of an open campsite in the middle of the bush! Thankfully there were no humans for who knows how many kms and we were only watched by a few birds and a beautiful mongoose family I enjoyed photographing for a while! It is so nice to be sharing our campsites with resident wildlife 🙂
After setting up the tent and trying to salvage the last of the water now coming out thick and fast from the broken water tank, we had sundowners on the roof watching the sunset. It was amazing to sit up there and look out at 360 degree views of pure wilderness, knowing that there was no one for miles. Magical. Even if there was a very stinky long drop toilet not too far away!
We were both pretty starving having not eaten since our brunch and so there was nothing for it but to set about cooking our favourite veggie casserole, made famous in the Kgalagadi, accompanied by our absolute FAVOURITE ribs!! As I type this Van is busy slaving away on both items, although I can claim to have peeled the carrots, so I have that going for me?
Keeping updated with this blog is also ‘work’, OK? Van just had a very uncharacteristic brain snap while chopping up onions, as I watched him he took his two carefully chopped onions and simply slid them all into our bin! Must keep a close eye on him for the next few days… if things get worse I may need to investigate some assisted care facilities!
I really hope we end up hearing lions roaring tonight… and maybe they will be attracted by all the water flooding out of our car and come and visit us for a drink. One can only hope as it would be nice to have some sort of silver lining for the fact we ended up with a ‘fully equipped’ 4×4 that has neither enough diesel nor any water – only the two things that you absolutely NEED with a fully equipped vehicle in the Kalahari. FUN TIMES.
What will tomorrow bring? Will I freeze again tonight? (no, because I will be back in my sleeping bag with socks on for sure). Will lions come and drink our leaking water? Will the long drop toilet continue to stink? Who bombed it so badly? Who poos right on the edge and leaves it there? WHO DOES THAT?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but tomorrow will at least answer some. The long drop thing will forever remain a mystery, but perhaps that is for the best.
Peace out.
OR NOT. Because you see just as I finished typing this amazing true tale, a cacophony of roaring began, VERY close to our little campsite. There appeared to be at least two or three lions nearby, trying to talk to each other. It was extremely exciting. I looked at Van and I was like WHAT DO WE DO? Here we were in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, with absolutely no fences or people within miles, and angry (poetic licence, just go with it) Kalahari lions roaring nearby. What he did next will stay with me forever. After gleefully stating “they are coming to get us”, he rushed to get onto the roof of the car. I expected that I was meant to do the same, but no, that was not the case. As I was also trying to get onto the roof, Van (rather crossly) told me “No, you stay down there.” And he was serious. There were lions roaring within like metres (perhaps slight exaggeration) of the camp, we had meat cooking on our fire, and my trained trails guide husband scrambled onto the roof (safety) of our vehicle and demanded I stay on the ground. It wasn’t exactly what I expected, and I’m almost certain my mum wouldn’t be happy about it. But I went with it nonetheless, anxiously peering into the darkness, wondering if I should at least try to gobble some of our ribs before I got gobbled myself. Meanwhile up completely out of harm’s way Van was utilising our brand new spotlight to try and locate exactly where the lions were, presumably so he wouldn’t miss a moment of my mauling.
As we all realise, there was sadly no mauling. No lions were visible due to the long, thick grass/bush, but we did set about finishing our cooking (we meaning Van once again but he did kind’ve owe me after the attempted murder by lion) pretty quickly. This time I got up on the roof so I could perform spotlight duty to provide early warning to Van should the lions decide to pay us a visit. After the earlier incident I was tempted to not tell him, but if it meant sacrificing the ribs it obviously wouldn’t be worth it.
We wisely decided to have dinner on the roof, because we didn’t want to miss any action if lions came within our view! AND IT WAS GLORIOUS. Those ribs are just the best thing ever, and Van’s veggie camping casserole isn’t too shabby either. The lions continued roaring a few times, which added to the excitement, but still no visual was to be had. Though we couldn’t see the lions, the stars were completely and utterly AMAZING and I just couldn’t believe that it was all happening. The only downside to one of the most amazing dinner experiences I have EVER had, was that it was something like minus 30 degrees and despite being pretty rugged up we were slowing contracting hypothermia.
Despite the potential impending mauling AND the sub zero temperatures, we chose to spend another 15 minutes cooking our BRAAI CONES (introduced by Van’s aunty Louise and truly AMAZING – waffle cones filled with chocolate, astros and marshmallows that melt together on the fire – available at your nearby Checkers store). I did regret this decision after my feet started icing up, but if I’m honest, it was heavenly when I did finally get to eat it. Then it was pack everything up and get into bed! We utilised all blankets to try and get warm. NO more lion sounds were to be had.
UNTIL. I couldn’t sleep once again because the tent was really starting to bother me and I didn’t take a sleeping pill in all the near-death commotion. It was about 1:30am and with all my tossing and turning I eventually woke up Van as well. We were chatting a bit and then tried to go back to sleep until I heard something… and I was like “was that you?” and Van was like “NO.” and we looked at each other and we KNEW. We had visitors. It was just a slight sound of bushes rustling but it was substantial enough that it wasn’t going to be something small… but what was it? We couldn’t get the fly screen of our tent open quickly enough but even before we managed to Van yelled LION! And it was true. Three huge male lions were walking through our campsite!! It was really happening! All my dreams were coming true. Except they didn’t trash our things, which was a bit of a disappointment to be honest, but it was still cool to have them come for a short visit. It was all so quick and fleeting but I managed to get some D-grade video where you can at least see that there are lions. So there’s that.
They continued roaring for a little while, very clearly getting further and further away. What excitement!! Though we were a little offended they opted not to drink from our broken water tank, which was filling a container that we were going to use for our washing. LION Y U NO LIKE OUR DIRTY BROKEN TANK WATER?
It was hard to leave them walking away and simply go back to sleep, but sadly we had a mammoth tent on our stupid 4×4 and also of course there are SOME RULES (presumably?). So back to sleep we went.
That is really the end, until of course DAY FIVE (which has already begun really by lions coming through at 2:30 IN THE MORNING)
What will happen next?!