Matswere Gate

July 19th to 29th, 2019 round trip from Joburg

The itinerary:

July 19 & 20 – Pilanesberg NP

July 21 – Khama Rhino park (Martin’s Drift border crossing)

July 23 & 24 – Motopi 2

July 22 – Sunday Pan 4

July 25 & 26 – Passarge Valley 1

July 27 – Letiahau

July 28 – Khama Rhino park

July 29 – Home

In late July we decided to do our first “overland” trip in Africa. It was the first of many to come. It was our family of four and one of our son’s friends, Ethan. He was visiting us from Poland and is one of my adopted children 😜 I have many…. This ten day trip started off in Pilanesberg National Park, which is kind of on the way to Botswana. The park is always great and is only a 2 hour drive from Joburg. I enjoyed being back there again. We had sightings of 2 lions, hippo, giraffe, rhino, and elephant along with the usual suspects. We spent two nights there before heading to Botswana.

The morning of the 21st had us up very early and on the way to Khama Rhino park. It’s almost a two day drive from home to the CKGR. Khama is an ideal stopover point and a beautiful park. We had some fantastic sightings of rhino in the short time we were there.

The next morning was another early one as we set off for the CKGR. We only had two mornings that we slept past 6am. With three teenagers, it was a feat in itself! Now is a good time to mention a few things about the park. The CKGR is the second largest game reserve in the world. It is completely off the grid and the best word to describe it is desolate. We only saw four other cars in the seven days we were there. Two of them were at the same time. We have solar power and we carry a lot of water, so we were up for the challenge.  It is the real wild, so everything you take in – you take out. There are no garbage bins and no running water.

The Kalahari has lots of scorpions and the kids had a nightly ritual of searching for them with a uv flashlight. All of our sites in the park had at least one, but they were not close to us – thankfully!

Over the course of our week there, we had amazing sightings of animals every single day. As you can see from the itinerary, we moved around a good bit. This allowed us to see most of the park and now we know where to plan on going for our next trip, which has already been planned for next June. Here are some highlights from the sightings.

We all loved this trip and can’t wait to go back. The CKGR is absolutely a beautiful, unspoiled, piece of wilderness. If you ever get the opportunity to go, do it. It’s an experience you will never forget. I’ll leave you with some incredible sunsets.

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