Puff Adders and Peri-Peri...

We just got back from our camping trip to Khutse Game Reserve and the Central Kalahari Game Reserve on Sunday. It was in so many ways a typical camping trip...a much later than planned start, a long hot ride out, setting up camp in the dark, the occasional vehicle trouble. And then it was so much more unlike any camping trip I had ever been on. When our little convoy stopped in the park to gather firewood, someone was always assigned to watch out for lions. We were advised very very strongly not to get out of our tents at night, and judging by the leopard tracks in our camp the next morning that was good advice. We ate steak cooked over a campfire while we watched thunderstorms roll across the desert. We saw lions, leopards, giraffe, gemsbok, springbok, duiker, and host of birds. We had a thankfully uneventful encounter with a puff adder
and even got to see a couple of scorpions. I got some unbelievable pictures. All of the following pictures are actually taken by me. The lions and other wildlife are completely wild. While Khutse and the Central Kalahari Game Reserve are just that, reserves. They are not fenced and the wildlife is not imported. These are wild animals in the wild.

Alysa and I at the Tropic of Capricorn in Khutse

Our campsite in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve

Intensity

Yes, I actually took this picture. To answer your next question I was in a truck about 30ft away, in gear, with my foot poised above the accelerator.

Mom and Baby at the waterhole

Leopard tracks in our campsite

I suspect this is the leopard that left the tracks. She wasn't far down the road from camp. Talk about incredible camo!

Sunset on the trail

We ended up leaving the Reserves a day earlier than intended. One of our groups vehicles was having trouble overheating in the deep sand and 100 degree heat and our Pajero developed a radiator leak. Unfortunately, my truck was the only one with a trailer hitch so I had to pull the trailer the 40km from our camp to the gate through deep sand in the heat with a bad radiator. Not surprisingly, the leak got worse and we had to stop 3 times in those 40kms to refill the coolant system. By the time we reached the gate we were feeling pretty low. Gabs was 2 hours away and we were going to have to stop every 15 minutes, let the truck cool down, and add water. It was looking like it was going to be a long trip when the gate attendant came out to see what we were staring at in my engine compartment. When I showed him the pinhole leak near the radiator cap he promptly suggested putting pepper in the radiator. He said it would get sucked into the hole from the inside and as long as the leak was small enough it would plug it up. It sounded a tad crazy but then I was pretty sure I had heard that somewhere before. Well, I reasoned it couldn't make it worse but when we got out our pepper it was decided that it was too coarse to do the trick. About this time the gate attendant materialised again. It turns out that he had run to his house and returned with a packet of ground Peri-Peri, the rough equivolent of ground cayane pepper at home. He dumped the entire packet into the radiator. We paid him 5pula for the the pepper and his trouble and started on our way. 5km later, I couldn't help but stop to check and see if it had worked. It had, and we drove all the way back to Gabs without having to do anything to the radiator. In fact, as of this writing we are driving around with a bad radiator filled with Peri-Peri and still no leaks. Hope it holds until the parts arrive!