MEET THE AUTHOR

The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is one of South Africa’s most popular wilderness destinations, but it can also be an intimidating place especially for first-time, self- drive visitors. Kgalagadi Self-Drive – Routes, Roads & Ratings is a new guidebook with excellent maps, routes, advice and photography. It works as both a coffee table book and an indispensable guide in your car. One of the authors, tour guide and photographer Jaco Powell, tells us more.

What is your first memory of the Kgalagadi? Winter holidays in the park with my parents. I remember a majestic, black-maned lion walking next to our vehicle and looking over at us. Not up at us; he was almost level with the windows.

How would you describe the Kgalagadi to someone who has never been there? It’s a semi-desert paradise, with surprisingly abundant wildlife, an amazing big sky and the most perfect setting for wildlife and nature photography.

You’ve worked as a guide in the park for 20 years. What do guests want to see most? At first I thought everyone wanted to see lions. But more than half of the visitors have a giraffe at the top of their wish list. The question I get asked most is: “How do the animals survive out here?” I enjoy showing them all the small and unusual forms of life that are unique to the Kalahari, like pygmy falcons and ground agamas.

Your co-authors are Philip, Ingrid and Heinrich van den Berg. How did you distribute the work? We are all keen photographers and we’ve been photographing the animals and the scenery in the park for many years. We combined our photo libraries and chose the best shots; Ingrid co-ordinated the writing and gave me areas, routes and animals to write about; Heinrich did the layout of the book and Phillip helped with selecting images.

There are lots of guidebooks to South Africa’s national parks. What makes your book unique? The Kgalagadi is one of those parks where visitors often don’t know where to start

and what to look for. Our book guides the selfdrive visitor through the park, pointing out spots where regular sightings occur, complete with GPS and full descriptions. It’s like having a local tour guide in the vehicle. We’ve also included route ratings to help the visitor decide which area to explore and what to expect.

Who do you think will enjoy this book? It’s not only a guidebook; it also makes a wonderful coffee table book, with more than 600 pictures and pages filled with information and stories about the park and its inhabitants. Anyone who loves nature will enjoy it.

Tell us about some of your favourite photos in the book. There was a cheetah mother with her cubs, all of them walking along the crest of a dune. I was trying to use telepathy to encourage her to bring her cubs down towards the road for a family photo (p 261)! Another of my favourites is a shot of a camel thorn tree with a big sociable weaver nest in its branches, etched against a stormy sky (p 297).

Name your three favourite places in the park… Grootkolk Wilderness Camp is a special location, a place of solitude and fantastic sightings. The stillness is overwhelming and every animal or bird sighting is dramatic. Cubitje Quap waterhole, north of Nossob, is always a hive of activity. Many predators use the waterhole as an ideal ambush spot. Third would be the dune inside Twee Rivieren – it’s a wonderful place to sit and enjoy the spectacular night sky, or to watch a thunderstorm rumble in from many kilometres away.

In the preface, Heinrich van den Berg writes about “the living emptiness and solitude” of the Kgalagadi. Has your experience of the park been similar? One afternoon I drove north towards Union’s End. Near the picnic site, the smell of approaching rain, mixed with fresh wet soil, was carried on gusts of wind. A springbok ram stood in the middle of the riverbed and we watched each other. The first big drops arrived, plopping into the soft sand. A family of ground squirrels scurried to their burrows for cover. A herd of wildebeest appeared over a dune and big and small galloped in circles and dived into the wet sand. More springbok joined the ram and soon they were pronking. I was left standing in awe, soaked, grateful to have witnessed one of the Kgalagadi’s most special moments.

Tell us about one of your more interesting sightings in the park. At Kwang waterhole one morning, a herd of wildebeest was approaching to drink, and several cows had calves at their side. A family of cheetah watched from the opposite bank and the mother cheetah suddenly launched towards the wildebeest at amazing speed. She gained on the nearest calf within a hundred paces, brought it down and went for its throat to make the kill. At the same time, the mother wildebeest charged in with horns down. With the first swipe of her head, she dislodged the cheetah from her calf and with the second swipe, she hooked up her baby and flung it away from danger.

Kgalagadi Self-Drive – Routes, Roads & Ratings is published by HPH Publishing and costs R490 in bookstores. hphpublishing.com