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Published: June 17th 2017
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01 Sunrise
Driving along the track that leads from our camp site to the main track at sunrise. Geo: -23.4228, 24.0445
Another early start this morning, as we left our camp site at 6:30am. Last night had been a rather cool night, if tonight is also cool I will have to get out my hot water bottle. We had heard lions contact calling in the distance during the night and hoped that we would find them this morning. Paul had a quick check of the campcsite, he was hoping to find animal tracks in the sand. Unfortunately nothing had walked through here last night.
We drove the same route as yesterday morning. Our morning sightings included a large herd of gemsbok and springbok in the middle of another dry pan, a male kudu, various birds and an ostrich family with 10 chicks. This morning we stopped at the same camp site as yesterday for our coffee stop. Today there were no animals visible as we enjoyed our Amarula coffee and rusks. The sky this morning was beautiful and clear. It was a pretty quiet drive with the hi-light for me being the ostrich family. It was very cute to watch the little ones running along the track.
We got back to camp at about 10:30 and packed everything up
02 Gemsbok
A herd of gemsbok in the middle of the pan. as we were moving to another camp site for the next night. Tonight we were camping at Molose, camp site number 1. This is the best site in the whole reserve due to it being very close to an artificial waterhole. The drive took us a bit over an hour.
Paul drove slowly and we frequently checked the sand for animal tracks. We then saw something quite surprising – elephant tracks. Elephants don't live in this game reserve as there is not enough water or food for them here, but they have been known to now and again travel through Khutse on their travels. It was a very fresh track. Once we saw this track I had my eyes peeled for elephants and was quite excited. We frequently stopped and stood on the back of the car hoping to sight the herd.
Unfortunately we had no luck spotting them. There wasn't much else to see. We arrived at our camp site and drove past it and straight to the waterhole hoping to see some animal sightings.
Near the waterhole there was a large group of ten ostriches – both male and female, a couple of kudus drinking water, a herd
03 Gemsbok
A closer up view of the Gemsbok. of six gemsbok, ground squirrels and various coloured butterflies. We didn't spend much time here, it was quite warm.
Our camp site for tonight was Molose #1. Paul and I set up camp and had our lunch. As we set up our camp site we saw two cars drive past – the only cars that we would see for today. Today was a really bad day for my hayfever, I was constantly sneezing. This camp site did not have much shade at all – just a little tree and in the middle of the day it provided no shade. But somehow I managed to have a little nap in the warm tent, maybe the allergy pill helped.
Just after 3pm we went for an afternoon game drive. We didn't drive far, just two hundred metres to the waterhole. The car was parked in front of the waterhole and under the shade of a tree. We sat here and waited patiently in the car. While waiting for animal and bird sightings we enjoyed cold ciders/beers, did some reading and chatted. There were quite a few species of birds that came down to drink. In the distance the skies started to fill with
04 Kudu
A male kudu. dark clouds.
It was a very long afternoon as we did not see much, except for the birds and distant animal sightings of gemsbok and springbok. At a bit after 6, we slowly drove back to the camp site and did some more sitting around the fire, waiting for the coals to be ready for cooking. Camping is such a lazy holiday! For dinner we had garlic bread, mushrooms, peppers, vegetarian schnitzel for me and meat for Paul. We enjoyed another delicious meal by the fire and under the African sky.
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