Crossing the Kalahari

We had seen the movie, 'The Gods Must be Crazy' and on the basis of that, and little else, we decided to drive across the Central Kalahari. We spent a few days preparing the car, and getting as much information on the tracks through the area as we could...which was confusing at best.

The track in was punctuated by huge mud holes that ranged from a foot deep to over a metre deep. After a few hours of mud and then deep sand, we bumbled into a spectacular Kalahari black mained lion, who decided to stand in our path and roar for a while...which was really quite impressive.

We decided to push on and hit a really deep pothole/pond... which turned out to be very deep! Whilst in the middle of the pond, with water flowing in through all of the vents and doors, the exhaust blew off the turbo....wich sounded like a bomb going off. Larry instantly sounded like the type of tank that would bring a tear of joy to any Panzer Commander.

We crawled out of the hole, but having only just left a large male lion behind us, I decided to drive on until the grass was clear enough from the track for me to get out and inspect the damage.....that was 80km of sand and mud. Whist I can't account for it, we didn't see any wildlife for that whole period....nor could I hear anything except a ringing in my ears.

We stayed in the desert for three nights at Tau Pan (which means Lion Pan). Whilst I would love to say we camped under the stars amongst the lions, Tanya lined up a luxury lodge to stay at (Tau Pan Lodge). All of the other guests fly in...so we were quite the novelty! The lodge overlooked the pan, and was just divine. We hid Larry in the workshop, and joined all of the wealthy guests, enjoying safari drives and evening G & T's out on the pan....it really was pure luxury. In addition to the luxury which was hard to take the pan was home to a pride of lions that could be heard roaring each night and actually used the chalets as shade during the heat of the day... pretty cool.

I spent a day with the famous San Kalahari bush men, learning how to get water from tubas, setting traps and general survival....I was Bear Grills.

After three days of luxury, we had to hit the bush and finish our crossing. The track out was not used very often, and we had the lodge staff radio the anti-poaching patrols to get some feed back on if we could make it out....they said it was fine. Whilst parts of the track were grown over...our GPS kept us on route, and the drive out West proved to be much easier than the trip in.

We rested up a few days and have crossed into Namibia, and hit the capital Windhoek on Independence Day...which is a real bummer, as our starter motor has been through one too many water crossings to work anymore....so we are stuck here for a few days for parts. However, just when I was feeling Larry was letting us down, we met six poms who had been on the road for a few months in a Landy they paid 30K for, which had broken down continuously, and was sitting in a backpackers parking lot with a blown motor.....go Larry! (he is still NOT coming home with us Dave!!!)