Africa Wild

Paradise under stress: KTP October 2019

I’ve been meaning to get going on this travel tale for some time now, but what with tinypic disallowing free posting, the silly season and a whole lot of work, it kind of fell through the cracks on the To Do list.

Now, with Virus lockdown, and less work, there is a window of opportunity to get cracking with the report.

The planning of this trip was a comedy of errors. The original plan was to come up to the park with our grandson, his family and his other grandparents, so we originally booked a trip for all of us during the September school holidays.

However, my daughter in law fell pregnant as was due exactly at the time we had planned to go to the park.
No hassle, granny, grandpa and our grandson, Dakotah were still set to travel.

(BTW the leopard Dakotah is named after my grandson, if you thought the name sounded familiar)

Next problem was that his grandparents were then told that they needed to move off the farm which he was managing by the end of the year, so that ruled them out.

So we started redesigning our trip to be on our own, out of the school holidays. We ended up with a 16 day itinerary as follows:

2 nights Urikaruus
5 nights Rooiputs
2 nights Mata Mata
3 nights Nossob
2 nights Polentswa
2 nights Twee Rivieren

In the interim, friends of ours Chris and Jono, who had been up with us before, decided to join us for a few nights at Rooiputs and Nossob.

So on the 27 September we left Cape Town to Keimos.
Debbie behind the camera, and me, the nut behind the wheel

We left Cape Town at about 8am, thinking that as we only were going to Keimos, there was no rush.

We didn’t consider the Cape Town traffic, especially as they were toy toying on the N7 so we needed to divert along an alternative route.



Then the bakkie started smoking from the wheels and panic set in. We needed to find a repair place.

Eventually we found a place in Paarden Eiland. They looked at the bakkie and then quietly told Debbie that she should drive.
In all the traffic and towing the trailer I had been riding the clutch, hence the smoke and burning smell.

Nothing wrong.

We left Cape Town eventually at about 10.30am.

We got to Keimos later than expected, and had an unremarkable stay at Die Werf, but being really exhausted after the day’s events we grabbed a glass, or two, of wine a bite to eat, and set off to bed.

We left Keimos the next day and arrived at Twee Rivieren at about 10am, and set about doing all the admin stuff, after which we set off for Urikaruus.

We were shocked to see just how dry the park was.

Our trip up was pretty quiet, with general game spotted along the way, including some eland
We arrived at Urikaruus at about 2pm and decided to stay in and watch the comings and goings at the waterhole.


And at the same time just taking in being back at our favourite place

a Kalahari tale!

This is an impressive eland

Perhaps you could cope rather well with stress under paradise conditions.

Whatever had happened, you got there!

Well done all round, Gavin!



my daughter in law fell pregnant as was due

Very organised!


No fences there for the photographer!

More car problems

Alf wrote: ↑Thu Apr 02, 2020 7:15 pm More car problems

Nope That was it

Some pictures of Urikaruus

Sounds more like you were under stress before the trip But glad it worked out for you somehow!

On board - comparing notes