To Mata Mata

I wake up refreshed, having had the best night’s sleep since we left Upington. Our 6am game drive is in a bigger truck and although there are two couples with us we all have a window seat. It’s very noisy though and game are more nervous of it; it also can’t reach the lion kill in the time allowed so we have to settle for jackals.





We also find some ostriches having a dirt bath, more jackals, some wild meerkats and red hartebeest. On the way back we find two male lions close to the gate.

We have breakfast in the restaurant, leaving Mike free to get on with packing up camp. By the time we get back he’s packed all the tents and we help stow everything in the vehicle and trailer, leaving just after 11am. The drive to Mata Mata takes us through the park so we have the opportunity for game viewing on the way. We find a group of secretary birds and two male lions, one apparently much older and with a damaged eye.

Further on we encounter a large herd of giraffe; two of the males are “necking”. One is much paler than the other and they walk side by side in a tight circle, stopping to bash each other’s neck with their own. It looks so graceful considering that they’re fighting.

When we arrive at Mata Mata the campsite is quite full, but we find a shady spot near the fence with a clear view of the park. We set up camp and go to check out the shop; I buy a sausage roll to share with Denise and a can of dry lemon – my new favourite drink, like bitter lemon with more quinine. We’re much more remote here but the campsite is well equipped with showers and toilets, a scullery and drying area. There’s a bird hide, too.



We are right on the border with Namibia and Bobby-Jo tells us we can walk to a small shop on the Namibian side. There’s working wifi here, too, but the signal doesn’t extend far beyond the ranger’s office. None of us has had a phone signal since leaving Twee Rivieren.

Just before 6 we meet the ranger, Andrei, who will take us on our game drives here - he is a San bushman, one the indigenous people whose language includes distinctive clicks. The game drives at Twee Riviern tended to stick to a single dirt road that followed the line of a dry river but here there is a greater choice of routes. We soon turn off the main road onto a track that runs along the dry river bed through a landscape that is weirdly reminiscent of British parkland. The grass and the shape of the trees are quite familiar, although the light sandy soil is not. Neither are the massive skeletons of dead trees that seem to die from the inside out, collapsing outwards to resemble the exoskeletons of enormous many-legged spiders.

We see some wildebeest and an enormous herd of springbok, including some who are “pronking” – a distinctive bouncing gait where all four feet leave the ground at once. We find a Kori Bustard, the largest bird capable of flight - birdlife is very plentiful here and we also spot a southern white faced owl, a spotted eagle owl, red necked falcons and an immature pale chanting goshawk. As night falls we see giraffe silhouetted against the sky, bat eared foxes and a rufous-cheeked nightjar. Later, a scrub hare and a porcupine and then a grazing giraffe who, despite his size, blends in to the vegetation so that we don’t notice him until we are a couple of metres away.

When we get back to camp, Mike has cooked us smoked roast chicken with potatoes, veg and a salad. We go to the hide after dinner but there’s nothing much to see.