Kalahari Desert

As our spare part hadn’t arrived yet, we had enough time for a detour into the Kalahari. From Gaborone it as a 240km drive to the gate of Khutse Game Reserve, the southern extension of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The last 100 km are on gravel road, which was very sandy in parts and got worse and worse until we finally reached the gate. On the way we helped a couple of broken down cars with water for their cooler. One time it immediately left the poor looking cooler again to drip into the sand, nothing we could do for this guy.

We spent the night in front of the gate next to the road and entered the park the next morning. We had made a reservation with Bigfoot Tour, the company in charge of the campsites for 2 different sites, each next to a pan.

The roads in the park were actually better than the one before the gate. Mostly the sand wasn’t deep and we had no difficulties driving around. We just had to watch our diesel consumption, which is always much higher on sandy roads. As our tank isn’t huge, we had filled 2 jerry cans. The last filling station is 100km before the gate, where the gravel starts. Therefore we had to make sure we would get back there without running out of diesel.

Our first campsite was No 2 at Moreswe Pan, from where we had a bit of a view over the pan. Beside a group of Oryx, we had Kudu and Springbok crossing the pan to get to the waterhole.

The next day, we drove past Molose pan and further north into the Central Kalahari GR, were we camped at Khankwe No 1, another nice campsite with a little view and a beautiful acacia tree in front of us.

Big parts of the park had been recently burned down, to get the new grass growing. For us not a very pretty sight, but many animals will soon enjoy the fresh green grass.

On both campsite we didn’t see another human for countless kilometres. There was no light, no noise, just peace and tranquility.

On the way back, we met other overlanders and stopped to exchange experiences. Always nice to meet likeminded people on the road.

In the end, we had to use only one jerry can to get to the filling station. From there we were going back to Gaborone, in the hope that our spare parts will make it through customs fast, at least they were already in the country.