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| ashley's Diary |
| Date |
15 Oct 2006 |
| Country |
Sa Kalahari |
| Weather |
Sunny and very wet in places. |
| Diary |
Kalahari Desert
It took quite a while to get up here…it’s only about 800 miles from Cape Town and of course it is ever so tempting just to keep the accelerator floored and zoom (a relative term for LR with no name) towards home…if only we hadn’t booked the tickets!
We stayed at Nossob campsite in the Kgalagadi Trans-Frontier National Park (border of SA, Namibia and Botswana) The scenery is…..well….dry scrubby desert with acacia trees and red sand dunes stretching as far as the eye can see all under a huge sky with puffy white pure cotton wool clouds floating by…wonderful! The first night there we watched a pride of 12 lions watching us from the hide overlooking the waterhole. As we walked the 50 metres or so up a stick walkway the lions followed trying to take swipes at our legs as they shadowed us back to camp. They spent the rest of the night patrolling the low (5 foot) fence as we watched nervously from inside…being only 2 foot away from a huge male roaring with only a small, non-electric fence and my trusty dog-stick of English hazel to protect us was a sobering experience and made me feel like I was in a cage at the zoo. I spent the evening waking up with shivers down my spine as their roars permeated the desert air. They were still there the next morning and Clare suggesting we spend a night at an unfenced camp were met with howls of protest from all of us…the kids are now calling her “Mad Mum”
PIC SHOWS: British road engineers are looking into the possibility of using African cat's eyes on the roads, snag would be a bit of a "bump" as the lion is run over.
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