Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park
After a picnic lunch at a wine farm,
J. and I hopped on the overnight InterCape bus to Upington, the closest town to my favorite park in South Africa, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. We stopped at Pick N’ Pay for groceries and picked up our 4WD car rental. On the way into the park, we stopped, as always, at a little resort named Molopo where they serve the best ostrich fillets in the country. J. had the ostrich fillet, and I ate what I always eat in South African steakhouses: a sad little Greek salad.
After all of the game viewing I had done at Masai Mara, the Serengeti, the Ngorongoro Crater, Chobe and Etosha, I thought that a visit to the Kgalagadi would anticlimactic, but it was fantastic. It’s like nowhere else on earth. And a self drive safari is so much better than a group safari, as you can imagine!
I was thrilled to see this pride of hungry lionesses.
One of them scratched the tree like an oversized house cat.
We had a great little chalet
and we braaied every night over the coals.
In the morning, yellow mongooses would drop by to beg for breakfast.
Birds spotted: Kori Bustard, Pale Chanting Goshawk, Crimson Breasted Shrike, and a Northern Black Korhaan (below). This korhaan hung out by the side of the road in the sand dunes and sounded the alarm every time we passed. I think it wanted to collect a 5 rand toll!
We saw lots of Sociable Weaver nests. Some nests,
which are composed of lots of smaller nests, are so heavy that they topple the supporting tree.
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