We awoke to another cold morning - frost on the vehicle; the only thing that enticed me out of bed was the thought of a hot shower - everywhere we have been there has been plenty of hot water and given the weather that has been a real plus. I looked out of the window to see if the ground squirrels were up - sensible souls, they were still snug in their burrows!
We put the hot plate on in the kitchen to warm it up for breakfast and it definitely helped with eating our fruit and yogurt followed by toast- the air was positively balmy with fleeces on!
We headed off to Nossob, tonight's rest camp, at gate opening time i.e. 7.30am; what would the new day bring? ......today turned out to be a honey badger day. We saw two in different areas and they proved what we had been told by the guide on the sunset drive at Twee Rivieren - when you find a honey badger you will also find a jackal and a pale chanting goshawk hoping for a meal. However the second sighting only had the goshawk no jackal.
The first sighting was by far the best and occurred because we stopped to look at an adult and immature pale chanting goshawk perched in a tree - we then noticed a shower of straw coming from a sociable weavers colony (which I think had been abandoned as some of the nests had fallen down)- we pulled closer to see what was causing it and a honey badger emerged climbed down the tree and scuttled off into the undergrowth and then into open periodically stopping to dig and munch - it was closely followed by the adult goshawk and a black backed jackal. The immature goshawk didn't really move close to the action until the end of our viewing - clearly it was still getting the hang of the tactic!
We did find some meerkat colonies but no one was in they were all out foraging for the day but there was a whistling rat snuffling around and looking after the place.
The other new species we saw were birds - northern black korhaan,bataleur eagle (flying), gabbar goshawk, greater kestrel, black shouldered kite (flying),grey hornbill, Kalahari robin ( a lunchtime visitor along with a hopeful but unlucky jackal), a yellow canary, a lesser grey backed shrike and a white backed mousebird.
We got to tonight's camp about 1630 - we were back on the Botswanan border but you can only cross here with a special pass. After a usual cup of tea we went to the hide by the waterhole - a flock of cape turtle doves coming to drink , a group of wildebeest -standing, lying and drinking, a couple of jackals - one way off sleeping another warily drinking and frightened away by the wildebeest and a lone male springbok grazing his patch made it a much more interesting spectacle to watch than last night!
Hein prepared an early supper as we were off on the night drive 8-10pm which revealed lots of spring hares and two new Kalahari species - bat eared foxes and a spotted eagle owl. Our guide was a young English lad,James, from the Home Counties who was on his trainee guide placement - still a lot to learn but very nice and chatty which helped take our mind off the cold - body was fine with 5 layers but face and feet froze and my feet were still cold for several hours, despite socks in bed! James was still getting used to driving in sand so explained he needed to speed up the hill back - so I put my head down to reduce the cold as he sped up the hill - then he was worried as a warning light came on on his land-rover - nothing fatal as we made it back for 2130 without mishap! This gave us half an hour to get sorted and have a hot drink before the lights went out at 2200hours - this camp is in the middle of nowhere and runs on a generator.