23rd July – Kalahari Tented Camp
We are now used to the routine of waking up before sunrise, but that doesn’t mean getting out of the ultra warm sleeping bag into the freezing morning gets any easier. We slowly make our way towards the Kalahari Tented Camp via the lower dune road. Big mistake, we hear there were lions around Twee Rivieren later, but route choosing is a gamble every time I guess.
Hopefully the Auob riverbed will produce some sorely wished for big kitties. We sort of get our wish when we see 4 cheetahs lying under a bush but they are very far away and they can only be seen with binoculars, definitely no photo opportunity here.
Today we are booked into the honeymoon suite at the Kalahari Tented Camp. It is larger than the others and is the very last one so it is nice if you like privacy. The view is spectacular, though the waterhole is disappointingly far away. There is hot water too – though I stupidly miss that you have to open the hot water faucet almost in full to get any so I have another miserable ice cold shower.
In the afternoon we head south for our game drive, but apart from the usual suspects there is not much worth mentioning.
We can now once again return to our usual routine of cooking after dark. In unfenced campsites where the pitches are a far from each other we almost always cook in the light. Whenever we cook in the dark something always starts roaring and growling and kind of makes us urgently gulp down our food. Once, in Moremi, a hippo gatecrashed our candlelit dinner eating our campsite grass! We stood our ground continuing with our meal while the hippo went round and round us chomping loudly. Thankfully we weren’t eating anything it found interesting. Today we are having pizzas, made on the braai and they taste absolutely lovely.