I didn't have a great start to the day. I was woken at 04:45, with a headache (unusual and not caused by alcohol) by the Spaniards, clearly they had an earlier start than we did. Before my day, starts – anywhere – I have to have a shower, today it was coooold.
Gray has toured this area before and found camping spots in the bush to set up camp, his plan for this part of the trip…..however, with much pressure from the girls and extra planning along the way, he has found designated camp sites. So if we have noise and cold showers – we need to suck it up.
Having bought permits for the Palmwag Concession, we entered the area at 8:30. The concession is a protected wildlife area. Our first sighting was springbok. The terrain is rocky with interesting vegetation and the biggest Melkbos plants I have ever seen.
We were fortunate to have seen a herd of desert elephants in the river bed. These ellies appear to have longer legs and slimmer bodies than their South Africa cousins. Next was a herd of mountain zebra, they have a white undercarriage. Then gemsbok, ostrich, giraffe, jackal, kudu – loving this game reserve, I was back in my happy space – lappet faced vulture, herds and more herds of zebra.
At one point we were looking at this mirage (heat haze) ahead of us, it literally looked like sea in the desert. Before we knew it, we had 4 gemsbok galloping across the plain in front of us – such an awesome sight.
It took us 3 ½ hours to do 45km. It was a very pleasant drive through the conservancy, with some definite 4x4 areas, specifically in and out the rocky river beds. There are 8 designated camp sites, basically clearings, as you have to be totally self sufficient to camp here. We stopped at ‘Camp 3’ for our picnic lunch. The highlight, besides Al’s veldie, was George producing Magnum ice creams from his freezer.
The afternoon drive ended at Camp .. ‘In the middle of nowhere’.. in the dry Hunkab River bed (it was not a dedicated site). The area was desolate with very little vegetation and far less animals, fewer river beds and obviously less water. The only signs of life were sparsely scattered welwitchias.
At around 3 we stopped in the river bed next to a cliff and set up camp. The first thing we saw were lion spoor, we've had worse; we've had the actual lions outside our tent in Botswana and ellies and hippo in Zambia. The boys have been dreaming about this night (sorry for the girls – it was too far to go to any camp site). I have to be honest, sitting in the river bed, just the 6 of us, sipping on our drinks, watching the African sunset, this is a piece of heaven.
We finished eating around the campfire as the last of the daylight merged with the waxing moon. We were tucked up in our tents by 7:30, after another hard and exciting day.
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