After leaving the Tankwa Karoo and a brief one-night stopover near Brandvlei en route to the Khalagadi Transfrontier Park (KTP), we arrived on the Botswana side of the Park for several days of safari going before moving to the the South African side for even more fun.
For you folks that followed our travels last year, you may recall that we spent a total of 18 days in the KTP, split between the remote wilderness of the Botswana side and the rather tame, by comparison, South African side. For you newcomers, if you want to see what I discussed about the KTP, along with photos and videos of the trip, I refer you to the appropriate posts here:
First KTP post with some background info and our first several days: overlandwithkmcgee.com/september-1-2-kgalagadi-transfrontier-park-mata-mata/
Second KTP post with description of our next several days on the Nossob drainage: overlandwithkmcgee.com/september-3-7-kgalagadi-transfrontier-park-nossob-river/
Third KTP post with description of our next several days in the Botswana wilderness portion of the Park: overlandwithkmcgee.com/september-8-15-kgalagadi-transfrontier-park-botswana/
Fourth KTP ost with description of our last several days on the lower Nossob drainage: overlandwithkmcgee.com/september-16-18-kgalagadi-transfrontier-park-lower-nossob/
Understandably, if you don’t want to revist last year’s post to learn more about the KTP, here’s a brief summary. The KTP is a transfrontier park in the Kalhari Desert, which you may recall from previous posts, is a large semi-arid sandy savanna in southern Africa covering 350,000 sq mi, including much of Botswana as well as parts of Namibia and South Africa. The KTP occupies 15,000 square miles, which is actually only a small portion of the Kalahari, and was created by combining two Parks, one on either side of the border, for a supposedly seamless management without fencing to allow for free movement of animals within the Park. So far, it seems to be working well for the ecosystem and the tourists.
For this year’s post, I am going to treat our visit to the KTP in a single (long) post, but with an emphasis on photos and videos since I already discussed a little of the natural history in last year’s posts (see above). Moreover, I am going to divide the photos into logical categories rather do a chronological listing, and I appologize for posting so many photos, but that is what most people say that want to see. So here it goes:
Campsites:
Note, we camped at a couple of great rustic Botswana campsites that had minimal ablutions, but also splurged for a couplel of luxury campsites, a chalet and a tented camp to satisfy desires for creature comforts:
Miscellaneous people pictures:
Here’s some miscellaneous people pictures from throughout our KTP visit:
Food and drink:
We all equally contributed meals, and believe me when I say that not only did we NOT go hungry, we also ate gourmet meals that you wouldn’t believe for bush camping. There were lots of amazing meals by Mark, Kirsten, John and Annette, but the photos below are biaed towards mine and Nancy’s contributions (sorry guys):
Landscapes:
Here’s a few photos of the KTP landscapes, but see last year’s posts if you want to see more. Note, the KTP is centered around the two ancient river beds of the Nossob and Auob. These are fossil river beds that formed eons ago and rarely have any water in them today, other than the maintained water holes and the occasional flows during exceptional rainfall years (e.g., once every 20 to 50 years):
Wildlife photo gallery:
Here’s a sampling of this year’s wildlife sightings:
Last but not least, here’s a composite 19-minute video of our cat sightings, with a black-backed jackal thrown in for good measure.
Yikes, I forgot to include a short video snippet of an amazing sight of 30 or giraffe marching in single file with purpose. I have never seen a giraffe on a march like this before. Unfortunately, after being mesmerized for several minutes, I finally got the phone up to capture the last string of giraffes in this long column, so here’s another short 1 minute video:
For those of you that made it this far through this post, congratulations! Now I am going to reward you few, sort of, with a somewhat embarrassing story in an attempt to preempt Nancy and others from telling this story. Having been through many border crossings in Africa, and having been told that I can’t bring meat, dairy and poultry products across borders because of the risk of hoof and mouth disease, despite the fact that science indicates that there is no risk to humans and minimal risk of transmission to livestock. Nevertheless, the law is the law and I have been flirting with disaster by ignoring the law and hiding packaged cheese, yogurt and milk in my vehicle before crossing borders. Until my latest crossing, the most the agricultural agents have ever done is open the back door of the Green Dragon, look in my cooler, and send me on my way. SO, having this vast experience under my belt, I was confident that I could hide those products in the Green Dragin when we crossed from South Africa into Namibia after leaving the KTP. I even convinced Mark, Kirsten, John and Annette to do the same. John and Annette had the good sense to give me their prohibited products, and Mark and Kirsten had the smarts to hide their products in fool-proof hiding places. I, on the other hand, only took minimal measures to hide my products. Anyways, the Ag agent was on a mission and tore apart my vehicle to find prohibited products, and sure enough he hit the jackpot with me. At this point, with all watching, including other tourists crossing the border, it was announced that I was hiding prohibited products and would face the option of 2 years in prison or 8,000 dollar fine (several hundred USD). You can imaging what happened next. Every tourist starting throwing prohibited products out the window left and right. After much scare-tactics and scolding, and with a little pleading on our part, the Ag agent let us go with just a verbal warning! Wow, we (I) got off lucky. I should note that the Ag agent wanted to know who, Nancy or me, was responsible for the deception. Nancy volunteered, thinking they would never put her in jail, but I quickly confessed that it was solely my fault, thinking I would just pay the fine. Anyways, lesson learned – it’s not worth it violating the law to save a package of cheese and half-gallon of milk.
OK, that’s all she wrote for the KTP. We are off to the Namib Desert and the famous Sousouvlei dunes. See you there!