BOK FOR ANYTHING

The unthreatening residents of the Kgalagadi reserve

S one jolts, bumps and shudders along the terminally corrugated roads of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, visitors approaching from the opposite direction often stop and ask: “Seen anything?”

I used to make the mistake of excitedly replying: “Gosh yes! There’s a herd of springbok about 2km further on your left! You can’t miss them. And gee, I think I saw a groundscraper thrush!”

I would be met with blank, even pitying looks, as though I had to be suffering from cognitive development issues. See, most people visit the park for the big, fierce animals: leopards, cheetahs, lions. The antelope are there merely to provide the predators with something to chase and eviscerate. You’re not supposed to pay any actual attention to them.

Imagine my joy then when, during a visit to the park in June, I met Joe Martin from Durban, who is not only interested in birds and gemsbok but also in inanimate objects.

“It’s amazing to see all those border markers and trig beacons,” he said, his face lighting up.

Martin is a surveyor, so his enthusiasm is understandable. But I felt an immediate kinship — I too had gazed at those concrete blocks that stand at intervals along the Nossob River bed, “RSA” emblazoned upon them, and marvelled at what they represent, an artificial boundary laid out in colonial days to separate one nation from another. The jackal that weaves its purposeful way through the low grass … one minute it’s in South Africa, the next it’s in Botswana.

And the trig beacons ranged along the tops of the red dunes — so essential once, so quaint now in the GPS era. They should have heritage status.

I met Martin and his wife Barbara Siedle at Grootkolk, an unfenced wilderness camp at a waterhole in the far north of the park. Try to go much further north and you are brought to an abrupt stop by Union’s End, a spot that demands to be visited just because of the delightful air of geographic finality captured in its name.

Grootkolk might be my favourite place in the world. There are just four units, accommodating up to two people each, so, counting the camp attendant, there will never be more than nine people in residence. By comparison, a camp like Twee Rivieren at the southern entrance is a rowdy, bustling metropolis.

It’s remote, quiet, surrounded by statuesque camelthorns, pitch dark at night (so you see every star) and filled with the delicious risk that you are being watched by unseen lions, within easy pouncing distance.

In other Kgalagadi wilderness camps, such as Kieliekrankie and Urikaruus, the accommodation is on stilts, so there is a comforting 2m or 3m of space between yourself and the fanged creatures on the ground below. But at Grootkolk, the units are at ground level, so step out of the door at dawn and you could be eye to eye with a lion pride.

The camp itself is open to the surrounding savannah but each unit has a small braai area in front of it, protected by a waist-high fence, which the local lions might or might not regard as insuperable.

The accommodation structures at Grootkolk are a hybrid of tents and World War 2-style sandbags — the bags, filled with a mix of sand and cement, have been stacked to form low walls, with canvas for the roof.

Because the camp is so small, and so perfect, it’s hard to find even one free night on the SANParks website, let alone two consecutive nights, as I had been lucky to do.

The trick, as I learnt from Martin and Siedle, is to try a website such as krugerpark.com. They and their friends had managed to book three units at the camp at the same time — albeit a year in advance — for three consecutive nights.

The six of them invited me for dinner one night in the camp’s communal kitchen and braai area. The camp attendant urged them not to risk walking the 20m or so from their units to the braai area in the dark, so they drove, for possibly the shortest ever drive they had taken in their lives to go out for dinner.

The attendant must be a bit paranoid, I thought. As I drifted to sleep that night, I heard coughing through the tent canvas. What is the attendant up to out there, I wondered before dropping off.

Next morning Martin asked: “Did you hear that coughing last night? It could have been a leopard.”

So yes, perhaps paranoia is a useful survival tool. — © Anton Ferreira