southafricasa.co.za

I was up really early, the sun was just coming up over the gorge, it was absolutely freezing out, too cold even for the dassies, but the reward, absolutely nobody just me and all that water crashing 58m down below. The sun tried especially hard to warm the earth. I had made a cup of coffee to take with me, but by the time I got to the bottom it was cold. Now that’s a cold morning 🙂

While we were busy packing the car this morning, the earth trembled and one could hear the sound of thunder, yes an earth quake, just a little one, but an earth quake all the same. It was amazing feeling the earth move under your feet. Felt alive.

In no time at all we made it to Upington, where we had an early lunch, filled up the car and bought our provisions for the next few days. The road from Upington is pretty much straight, we follow the Red Dune Route, which sounds ominous but the road is most certainly tar and in excellent condition. From time to time you signs for Namibia, I can’t quite believe we are so far North. Phil napped most of the way and Erica happily chilled without any fuss playing puzzles. In no time at all the landscape has changed completely a few scragily trees here and there and grasslands as far as the eye can see, the colour of the grass is really indescribable and photographs do no justice at all.

I got out the car to take some photo’s of the most interesting nests, made by social weaver birds, they nest on the top of telephone poles, only because there are no trees. They build these huge big balls of grass. The noise they make is amazing, just a flutter of twittering little things, in and out, in and out. I could easily have sat there in the shade of the thorn tree that was under the pole and just watched and watched this busy little hive.

We have a list of animals spotted in the Kgalagadi Park:
Red hartebeest
Springbuck
Those little shy brown duiker buck
Gemsbok
Ground Squirrels, oh my how freaking cute
Wildebeest
Wild Dog
Tawny Eagle
The heaviest flying bird in the world the Cori Bustard, weighing in between 13.5 and 19 kg, its huge

Can you believe all that ticked off in an hour and a half, can’t wait for tomorrow, but I really hope we see leopard tomorrow.

Our picnic is packed for tomorrow, everything ready at the door, our plan to get up really early and hit the road, nice to have an empty car so we can make a nest for Erica in the back of the SUV.

I even cooked for tomorrow night, so we don’t have to stress about dinner.

Oh and I almost forgot, the water here at Twee Rivieren comes straight out of the ground, no filtration, no chemicals, just so, its really oily, really weird because you wash your hands and they still feel oily, like you’ve been eating chicken drumsticks with your hands, which we had by the way. It was so weird that we had three guys in our chalet from the maintenance team. Such nice guys, the one said he was born in the park and the waters always been like that, seriously he washed his hands under the tap and looked at us most confused like we were crazy. What nice guys though and such spirit and laughs. They left here laughing probably at us silly tourists. Classic.