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Thank you everyone. Lol Foxy not everyone has your experience with off road driving so it was pretty hairy for us!

Anyway on the the next leg of the journey.

The hide at Nossob always gives one something to look at when you are not out on the roads driving and although this year we did not have any predators other than the jackal there was always something to sit and watch.

Here is a Springbuck drinking at the new waterhole which appears to already have sprung a leak and we were somewhat taken aback at the shape and construction of the new drinking trough.



And another picture clearly showing the posterior dorsal crest which contains glands secreting a sweet smelling scent the function of which is unknown but it might contain pheremones. The crest is 'stored' in a blind fold of skin forming a pouch similar to that of marsupials, hence the specific name of the species being marsupialis!



As always ground squirrels are to be found everywhere.



We became quite used to seeing threatening skies and they surely did make for fantastic contrasts on pictures.



The water holes have such strange names. Cubitje Kwap means ant bear hole!




A beautiful martial eagle in a tree!



And then lots of lovely hartebeest who were very obliging as well as a one horned Gemsbuck!





No time for more now will have to continue after I get out the pool!

Thank you Lorraine and Elsa!

On our trip down to our next camp from Nossob we made the decision to go to Urikuruus via TR - this decision was to have repercussions in more ways than one. We had however not been able to touch sides with our families for over a week and all agreed that we would travel the Nossob road down to Kij Kij and hence across the lower dune road to Twee Rivieren.

Someone was mentioning that they had not seen many Bustards on their trip well we certainly saw plenty.



On our way down we were lucky to witness ostrich doing their mating dance and then even luckier to see them actually mating.



Just before the mating ostrich we saw a cheetah with a damaged right eye which was looking very sorry for itself in the rain. I had run out of space on my card and was frantically deleting pics when hubby passed the video camera for me to capture footage from my side so unfortunately you will all have to wait for the Boss to come up with some pics. I am also saddened to say that once again we were overtaken at this point by three 4 x 4's all with the numberplates starting with CAW who clearly believe that the speed limit in the Park is 100 kms's an hour. Well all three missed the cheetah and the mating ostrich but it is no consolation given our anger once again at the speeds that vehicles are travelling. Much has been written about this and yet it is such a simple system given the fact that one cannot leave or arrive at a camp without permits. It would be a simple matter to check the time that the vehicle left a camp and what time it arrived at the next and its surely not rocket science to realise that speeds in excess of 100 kms an hour are the order of the day.

Even the Bataleur eagles got to bath in the huge puddles on the flooded roads!



One of the fascinating parts about travelling on the Nossob road is how close one gets to the Botswana border which is marked by these little blocks of cement showing the RSA side!



As we approached Kij Kij there were more and more nursery groups and I have to honestly say that I believe that the bulk of the herds of animals are in this area and on the Auob side.



The Springbuck have such gentle and trusting faces!



The Nossob river bed with the border and the dunes which at this point start getting redder and redder!

We were quite amused at the misspelling on the sign where the Nossob road is closed.





The signs at the beginning of the dune roads always amuse me as one encounters people travelling really fast on these roads and frequently the tracks show that folk have gone from left to right and then back again. I would hate to think of how serious an accident could occur having seen this.



We came across this Lanner Falcon posing beautifully on the side of a dune (I do wish I knew how to enlarge this on the camera before saving to my computer) as well as this gorgeous dune with spoor!





I just love the dunes - I find them beautiful to look at and they seem to stand out so starkly against the skyline.



Yet another waterhole with an interesting name - this one means "Large Female Lion"



I have included a lot of extra things here mainly for my overseas friends from Wildearth and Africam who are all following my trip report. Please bear with me those of you who have seen these names many times over.

I am loving your report Penny. Keep it coming.

Thank you kindly Gavin!

I am going to attempt the next episode and hope I do not go overy my page limit.

Having done all our telephoning at TR and spoken to grandchildren and children it was into the shop for last minute purchases and then off to Urikuruus. As we hit the Auob river bed just after 2 p.m. we could see the sky becoming more threatening by the minute and we knew we were in for a huge storm.



Boy boy was it bad when it hit us at about 14h45. The rain was absolutely torrential, the thunder and lightning virtually continuous and then hail! We had no choice but to pull to the right of the road under a tree to try and protect the car from the hailstones which although not huge in size were being driven into the bodywork by a gale force wind. Roads which had been saturated a scant few days before were once again flooded and almost impassable. By now we were all regretting our decision to travel via Twee Rivieren but had to make the best of a bad job. We arrived at Urikuruus and waved Marius back into his unit - there was no point in him becoming saturated and we would have to just sit it out till the torrential rain let up. The stairs are far too treacheous to even contemplate negotiating them carrying all our luggage and goods. We were also very upset to discover that the units which had been booked by us specifically and which we had written confirmation of were in fact not to be ours due to some very unseemly behaviour by the occupants. We have taken this up with Sanparks and hope that this type of thing will never occur again. Eventually at around 5 p.m. the rain let up enough for us to carry everything in and we settled down for what we hoped would be a wonderful 4 day stay at Urikuruus.

The next morning bright and early we were out of the camp and found our first of so many cape fox dens - in 2006 we really struggled to find these dens along with the meerkat manors and this year found them all over! Such precious little things and a lot of them were very obliging too!







Then the swallow tailed bee eaters and yet another pair of mating ostrich - sadly a bit obscured by the grass!

I have never seen so many mole snakes and such variations in colour - we think the rain must have brought them all out of hibernation.


A bat eared fox doing its listening thing and then it would dig frantically until it uncovered what had been making the noise underground.


The springbuck lambs were everywhere and so were some nice herds of wildebeest.



We saw several ostrich family groups and were priviledged enough to be able to film one male ostrich defending his brood from another male. I had never actually seen ostrich fighting and was quite in awe of the visciousness of the kicks that the father administered to the intruder's chest. Unfortunately it was too far but we did capture some of it on video which I will ask the Boss to supply so that I can show it to you at the end of this trip report.


We saw far fewer owls this year than we did in 2006 where hardly a tree along the Auob did not have one or two at any given time. This lovely Milky owl was in a tree near Dalkeith waterhole.


The ever present jackal - such busy little predators. Somebody in our vehicle posed the question - When do they sleep? They always seem to be on the go - daytime and nightime, trotting along on some mission!


Back at Auchterlone this time without any lions present. I will never visit the toilets or stop for a bite to eat without examining the area very thoroughly having seen the lion there.


I attempted to take a picture of the recreation through the glass of how the inhabitants would have lived in the house at Auchterlone but I fear that the glare off the glass will make it very difficult to make out the details. Nevertheless I will try especially for my overseas friends from Wildearth and Africam who are following this trip report.





The sign on the door is very apt given what we saw there at the start of our holiday!

I have now received the first of the pictures that the Boss took from his video camera to fill in the gaps where I was not able to get a picture! Some of them are a little blurry as they have been taken from a video and not stills.

The first picture is the cheetah we saw on our way up to Grootkolk



This cheetah is the one spotted on the Nossob road just before Cheleka that had the damaged right eye!



A yawning lion at Achterlone



The two male ostrich that were kicking each other - the intruder was seen on his way mighty fast after this kicking match!



I have made a concerted effort to resize the pics so I do hope that they are now downloading fast enough for folks to be able to view them.

Thank you Elsa, cc, foxy and africat. You make me blush with your kind words africat and I am SO sad that I missed you. Maybe another trip either in KNP or KTP you and I will get to meet.

CC I have a horrible feeling that some of these might not have resized as I wanted them to so please rescue me if that is the case.

In our first 5 or 6 days we hardly saw any snakes at all but suddenly after the rain they all started to show themselves and I have never seen as many mole snakes as we did on this trip.



The rain also brought out the first tortoises of the Spring/Summer



The giraffe one sees in Kruger Park just never seem to have the same dramatic backdrop as the ones in KTP so I could not resist a shot.


We were very lucky that there was an active hyaena den 5 kms north of the Urikuruus turnoff and I am sure that furry little critters were photographed by virtually everyone travelling in KTP!



One could hardly leave out this impressive female who appeared to be the alpha female and possibly the mother to the cubs!



We were also very impressed with the colour variations of the cape cobras which ranged from a golden colour to almost a canary yellow. This one amongst the acacia seed pods started to put his hood up and then changed its mind and slithered off.




And on the same drive this beautiful tawny eagle which appeared to have a damaged talon on one foot and a blind eye. He/she has obviously been around the block a few times!

Urikuruus has to go down as one of the best camps we have stayed in during our travels in KTP. One of its outstanding features is the waterhole although having been spoilt with the Grootkolk waterhole being illuminated we felt that this is possibly something that could be looked at for Urikuruus. The other shining star at this stunning little camp has to be Marius. Here I must digress and say that we felt that our experiences at Grootkolk were somewhat marred by the don't care attitude of the camp attendant. In stark comparison Marius keeps his camp absolutely immaculate and his willingness to please and help in whatever way he can is a shining example. I would like to say though that I do feel that Sanparks needs to address the camp attendant's living conditions. Whereas all the units at Grootkolk and Urikuruus have had the units altered with the addition of the wooden windows, the same has not been done for the camp attendant. I also believe and this is purely my own opinion that the camp attendants would be far happier if they were allowed to operate as a couple and could have their wives with them. They could then see to all the heavier tasks like lugging solar panels around etc and the wives could do the beds, kitchens etc. I must emphasise again how helpful Marius was and it was a great boon having him charge our big torches and camera batteries. He certainly is the shining star insofar as KTP staff go. By contrast the housekeeping and general lack of effort at Nossob is clearly visible and in my humble opinion Nossob really does need to close down and have certain basics put to rights like their ageing and ailing septic tanks. Having got that off my chest lets move on to some more of our sightings.

Thank you Salamanda, Lionspoon and Lorraine for your kind words.

Interestingly enough we saw more cape fox than bat eared fox but I could not resist this one.



And lots of the cape fox dens were fairly close to the road too.



The owls around Achterlone clearly use the wooden structures built for shade to perch on whilst devouring their prey so not surprising that there were a fair number of owl pellets beneath them and one could even make out all the little bones (probably whistling rats) in the pellets!



I just love the way the units at Urikuruus have been designed although I do believe that over time unless more bracing is done to the floors the creaking and movement is going to get worse and worse.



The combination of blue skys, red dunes and a giraffe was once again too much to resist so I just had to include this one.



More later - time for my live game drive on the computer!

After all the rain the growth of everything in the Park was remarkable and the antelope were loving all the new little shoots of grass prevalent in both the river beds. Some things even started to bloom -



And we were sure it would not be long before all the spiderlings in these nests would become extremely active.



Please bear with me those of you that have seen many of these small things over and over again but a lot of what I am posting is especially for my wildearth friends who have followed my trip with such interest.

The nests in some of these trees threaten to collapse the trees and in fact we saw many sociable weaver nests in a heap at the bottom of trees.



We made many trips to Achterlone and on one of our breakfast runs were munching away on bacon and egg sarmies when a lady approached us and asked about the yellow ribbon. It turned out to be none other than Ingrid and her husband who we were delighted to meet. She was staying at Kielie Krankie and twas she that enlightened us with the news that Africat was also back in KTP. We bumped into them severl times over the next few days and they were going to be moving to Urikuruus when we left and in fact would have the same unit that we did. I hope you enjoyed the entries into the sightings book at No. 3 Ingrid and on that note I would like to personally thank Michelle for all her endeavours to supply such beautiful books in the wilderness camps as well as at Unions end. Although we visited Achterlone often it afforded us no further special sightings but it is an awesome waterhole and I can just picture those people that lived in that little house long ago watching over that borehole!



There were quite a few manors on the Auob side whereas we had only one encounter with these delightful little creatures on the Nossob side. This one was remarkably friendly, even curious about us.



We now headed back to Twee Rivieren for our last two days in KTP. The Gemsbok are always so obliging with their poses and are quite photographic although they probably do not know it.

Thanks foxy,Pumbaa and Lorraine for the kind words.

On our second to last day in the Park we arrived one evening at Samevlooiing to be greeted with the silhouette of 4 cheetah on the dune!



The light was very bad but they did however come down and drink -



We were so chuffed with our sighting and hoped the Kalahari would be kind to us on our last day and afford us one more glimpse of these beautiful cats.

Our last day produced the meerkat family once again and we were highly amused that on this occasion a male had been left in charge of all the youngsters and although he played the role of nursemaid with great diligence and was very affectionate towards the young ones he became very impatient when they tried to suckle!

















I must confess that I was utterly entranced with these little creatures and can fully understand the global outpouring of grief at the death of Flower to a Cape Cobra bite. I could have spent at least another hour with them but we were anxious to see if the cheetah were still around Samevlooiing!!!

Thank you all for your kind comments. Ingrid it was a pleasure to meet both of you and I am so chuffed that you too stayed in Number three at Urikuruus.

On our last afternoon drive we came across a very obliging pygmy falcon and although we had seen quite a few on our trip this was the only one that sat long enough for us to take pictures.



We then acted on a gut instinct that our cheetah from Samevlooiing might very well be active and what a good move that was. What beautiful cats they were. Once again as this was fairly close to camp it turned into a bit of a bunfight with one White Condor in particular who behaved exceptionaly badly reversing up and down the little stretch of road where the cheetah were at high speed and then slewing his car in at an angle completely blocking off our visual! I just don't understand why some people believe emphatically that they own a sighting. All he was interested in was pointing his huge lens out of the window and making sure he got the best shots. I have tried to capture some of the cheetah - there were 4 in all and the one had a collar. At the end of the sighting the cheetah literally walked up the nearest dune and out of sight.

















We were quite intrigued that although the cheetah were obviously stalking at one point less than a kilometre up the road was this huge herd of springbuck with so many young ones they literally could not have missed!



We were so elated at our special sighting that we decided to not stay out till gate closing time but rather to return to TR for fillet steak, cheese sauce and chips in the guest house.

Lol Herman - I have corrected my mistake - indeed we have not see you two goodly people for some years now.

Africat - its wonderful to be able to help people if you can - I am sure that if you contacted Dupel Erasmus he would know of a social club based in TR who would find a good home for the weights.

Now to my closing chapter on the trip.

Our last night at TR was quite eventful as first of all we had to endure a plague of mosquitoes without a working aircon and then a never ending stream of folk (mostly Spanish) who walked up from the camping grounds and across the front of our verandah to get to the restaurant and shop. I do feel that there should be a fence between the camping ground and the guest house situated above. There was also some strange activity on the other side of the fence with lights and vehicles constantly moving and we wondered if a predator had not escaped onto the adjacent farm?

All in all this was a very different trip to the one we did in 2006. Firstly we had the vagaries of the weather to deal with and I do not think that we expected quite the deluge of rain we received on this trip. We were also not prepared for the verocity of the storms that lashed us at Grootkolk and Urikuruus and to a certain extent this weather had to have influenced our game viewing albeit not entirely in a negative way. The brown hyaena was possibly the biggest highlight along with the meerkat and young ones and the cheetah on the final day. Very different sightings in the mating ostriches, fighting male ostrich, the number of cape fox as well as meerkats and the variety of snakes was awesome. Somehow we just seemed to miss all the major cat sightings but there again I think we more than made up for this in other areas. These were the positives along with the stunning first stay at Urikuruus and meeting with the star of the KTP Marius. The positives far outweighed the negatives but to be honest one has to state both to create the balance. Our first stay at Grootkolk was not without its trials and tribulations and it was not particularly pleasant not being able to bath for 3 days along with having workmen in camp all day, every day! This meant that a quiet moment watching the waterhole was not possible due to the constant activity and noise! I briefly referred to the incident that took place at Urikuruus insofar as the bookings were concerned and trust that Marius will never be placed in this invidious position by overpowering and arrogant guests ever again. Nossob is the most wonderful camp and the bonus of having the hide is one that cannot be ignored by anyone planning a trip to KTP, however the Management needs to seriously address the sewerage problems in camp and a lot of the accommodation is desperately in need of a major upgrade. The saddest negative of all is the huge speed that both visitors and staff travel on the KTP roads and the impunity with which they contemptuously ignore the speed limits and are quite happy to ruin sightings for others. Management really do need to address this problem as a matter or urgency!

It was with great sadness that we took our last pictures at Twee Rivieren before embarking on the long trip home to Durban.







The salt pans just outside are fascinating and just so different from the Kruger landscapes.



Once one crosses the Orange River you start to leave the Kalahari behind you but one thing is for sure the saying is so true that having had the red sand beneath your feet you will always have the yearning to return.





We took a wrong turn outside Kimberley but this meant that we got this glorious view of a pink sea of flamingoes!



We stayed in the most delightful Bed and Breakfast in Kimberley and if anyone would like their name they are very welcome to pm me - we were most impressed not only with the value for money but the wonderful dinner served to us along with the helpful and pleasantness of the family who own it.

It will probably be several years before we make the long trek to KTP again and in January its back to our old stamping ground KNP.

Thank you all for reading my trip report and for the lovely comments and compliments. It was wonderful meeting old friend in KTP and making new friends - its really a special place and one thing is for sure we will return.