We’ve spent the last few months meandering around South Africa, visiting Sanparks’ wonderful national parks to find out what makes each one special.
This week, I am rounding off the series with a visit to my very favourite national park but how do I begin to describe my love for that wonder-filled and infinitely beautiful chunk of arid southern African wilderness known as the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park?
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All the other national parks are national treasures and, as we’ve seen, all have something very special to offer. However, when that orange Kalahari sand first wriggled its way into my shoes it also found its way into my heart. The Kgalagadi National Park has been my favourite place on earth ever since my first visit there.
Fortunately my husband, Bill is just as smitten as I am. We go back there as often as we can. Our first visit was in 1997, when the South African side was still known as the Kalahari Gemsbok Park.
Two years later, this national park and the adjoining Gemsbok National Park in Botswana were melded into the vast transfrontier or peace park, nearly twice the size of Kruger national park, that we know and love today. It is recognised as one of the most pristine wildernesses in the world.
Since our first visit we have made five return trips to the Kgalagadi. On our most recent trip, a few years ago, we spent nearly a month exploring it.
In spite of all the time we have spent in the park, there are still massive areas we have not yet seen.
It is a place of red and ochre, pink and grey dunes, of dusty roads, of sparse, yellow-tinged grasslands, spiky grey green bushes, stunted trees and majestic camelthorns.
While it lacks the plethora of plains animals seen in the better-watered parks, it provides incredible encounters with big cats and smaller carnivores, dryland antelope like springbok, gemsbok and red hartebeest, dancing ostriches and many fascinating little creatures.
Birding is exciting, too. Raptors, from the massive martial eagle to the tiny pygmy falcon are well represented. Tiptoeing secretary birds, pale chanting goshawks, graceful bataleurs are everywhere to be seen. There is also a fascinating suite of dryland birds to keep us twitchers twitching.
The Kalahari, in which the Kgalagadi is situated, is usually referred to as a desert although it is actually an arid region rather than a true desert . The south western section of the park, with its duneveld, is the most desert-like part. The north eastern part is mostly arid savannah.
It is a place of many moods, changing with the seasons, the light and even the hour of the day, and this is part of the Kgalagadi’s endless appeal. No two visits – no two minutes – are ever the same.
Two fossil rivers – they only flow after exceptional rains – meet at Twee Rivieren, the largest of three South African public rest camps and the main entrance to the South African side of the transfrontier park.
A road follows the Auob River north west to Mata-Mata, the smallest of the three South African rest camps, and the Namibian border post. The Nossob River, which forms the border between South Africa and Botswana, and its paired road, pass the third South African rest camp, Nossob, then they head further north to reach Namibia at Union’s End, the most northerly point of what was the Kalahari Gemsbok.
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The three South African camps are comfortable, attractive and well maintained. All now have swimming pools, which are a godsend on those hot Kalahari days.
They offer pleasant self-catering accommodation and perfectly lovely camping sites, spotless ablutions and an amazing array of wildlife. There are also a number of well-appointed, upmarket, self-catering wilderness camps in remote and beautiful parts of the park. If at all possible, splash out and spend at least one or two nights in these special places.
The Botswana side, including the remote Mabuasehube area, premium wildlife experiences but if you are visiting these camps you need to be completely self-contained and prepared for very limited facilities. Basic, unfenced and isolated, these camps are not for sissies but they are incredibly wild places and staying there is simply amazing.
We have visited the Kgalagadi during the harsh, dry winter months and at the height of summer when the dune valleys are transformed into flower gardens and the great Kalahari storms rage.
Once we paid a spring visit to the park. A little rain had fallen and the river beds were flushed with green.
The camelthorns and other acacias were quite magnificent in their bright spring greenery and there were baby animals everywhere.
Over the years we have accumulated so many magical memories of this ever-changing, always enthralling arid wilderness, but it is hard to explain to people why so many Kgalagadi regulars like us have so much love for the wondrous transfrontier park. To understand the parks unique and special attraction you’ll have to go there yourself.
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