Today we woke at 4.45am and had 3 cups of tea/ coffee before Hein arrived for breakfast at 7am. After breakfast we made sandwiches to eat while travelling - mine were peanut butter, jam and banana - yum.....John was a more traditional cheese, meat and cucumber! Everything packed up we set off for Upington en route to the Kalahari and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. We arrived in Upington at 9.30ish Hein bought a few more supplies and we bought some water and a couple of lovely doughnuts for later - I only managed to resist for 30mins while John lasted just over the hour. Shopping over we hit the road to do the final 243kms to the park gates at Twee Rivieren( or two rivers) and our first nights accommodation on the border with Botswana; indeed there is a frontier crossing at the gate for those that want to visit both sides.
After a quick look round, a visit to the shop and consumption of a much needed ice cream we headed off to a water hole to see what was about....not a lot in truth - but we did see a group of male oryx strutting around, a lone springbok, a group of wildebeest and very chatty white browed sparrow weavers in the tree behind us.
Back at the camp we saw yellow billed hornbill, cape sparrow and house sparrow. We then had a cup of tea and biscuit before preparing to go on the sunset drive from 5-8pm. It was a good introduction with a good guide - we saw lots of jackal - the most successful predator because it has a mixed diet and has adapted to the conditions, pigmy falcon (who often live with and protect the social weavers - its easier than building their own nest and better for the weavers who have a guardian angel) Verreaux's eagle owl and his mate sitting on a nest which was on top of a large social weavers empire! A pair of pale chanting goshawk and a martial eagle, also on a nest. We also saw at the same time the ostrich in breeding plumage - the largest bird - and the kori bustard - the heaviest flying bird.( and by chance they both appear in today's photograph!) The only new diurnal animal was the red hartebeest.
As we moved into the darkness and put the spot lights on we saw and heard more jackals, but also cape fox emerged, as did cape hare,spring hare and some steinbok and finally we spotted a pale chanting goshawk sleeping(or trying to).
We returned to a slightly tipsy Hein who had made us a curry (not too hot, John liked it so it must have been ok) while clearly imbiding some cooling beers.