Lions and the Boss - Tales from the Kgalagadi

Young cubs at the waterhole

If you have been reading any of my posts, you will know how I feel about the Kgalagadi. I just love it.

Water in the Kgalagadi

There are a number of wilderness camps in the Kgalagadi. These are small camps, except for the Kalahari tented camp, normally only with 4 units and the ranger. One of the most remote of these camps is Gharagab. This is north of Nossob, which is one of the traditional fenced camp. Gharagab camp is accessible by four wheel drive vehicles  only. It is seriously in the middle of nowhere. So much so, that the parks people asked if we could take the fresh bedding with us for the camps at Grootkolk and also for Gharagab. So off we went - into the wild. First drove north from Nossob towards Unions end along the dirt road. Then, we took the turn off to the right on a wheel track through the long grass. The first bit of excitement. After driving through the long grass for some time, we started smelling something like rusks cooking. Luckily we stopped. It was the long grass that was getting caught us in the engine. Could have set the car alight! That would have been fun. Would have been a few days before anyone found us!

Long grass in Kgalagadi

Without too much more excitement, we reached the camp. Another great wilderness camp. Four units with a ranger hut. The ranger told us that about a month ago, a leopard had her baby under the unit we were staying in, so high hopes of seeing a leopard. Of course, the first thing that Marie did was to sweep out the tent. Sand everywhere, but the tent must be clean!

Daddy coming to drink

There is a beautiful waterhole that all of the units look out on. There were also many beautiful flowers. There had been some good rain in the Kalahari and there were flowers everywhere.

Photographing the flowers

At about 3 in the morning, we were woken up by lions! There was a family drinking at the waterhole! A beautiful male and female and two almost adult male cubs. They were just starting to get their mane. What a lovely sight. As the sun rose, the lions were still there. Eventually they moved off about 100 meters away, and flopped down under a tree in the shade. There they stayed all day. We also forgot that they were there as we were taking photos of the insects in the flowers.

They settled down under a tree for the day

Lion under the tree

About an hour before sunset, they got up and moved off over the dunes. When lions move off, they move off. They go hunting and can cover a great distance in their range.

The camp from the tower

Behind the camp was a water tower. Marie and I decided that this would be a great place to watch the sun going down, so off we went. We climbed up the tower to watch the sun going down. As the sun was setting, we heard the lions. They had not good off, but had come back. There we were, sitting on top of the water tower in the growing dark and listening to the lion roaring not more then 100 meters away. So, we rushed down the ladder and headed back to our unit. When we reached the "safety" of out patio, the two young cubs were not more than 20 meters away. They obviously saw us rushing back to our unit and came to investigate. 

Young lion who can to investigate

Marie sweeping out the tent

The lions were back! The male settled down about 5 meters from our tent and started to roar. If you have ever heard a lion roar, you will know just how loud this is. The whole tent would shake with each roar. We tired to get some sleep, but he just kept on roaring. Eventually, the stick insect sized wife of mine, stuck her hard out of the window of the tent and yelled at the lion to keep quite now! The lion got up, mumbled a bit and move off to a more respectable distance to carry on with his roaring. Just goes to show, who is the boss.

The young lion cubs

The road out was a lot of fun and you could see why this was for four wheel drive only. The back went over the dunes and was very sanding. Quite a challenging drive to get out.

The Southern Cross. Beautiful night skies.