We were very eager to get going and soon arrived at Xade staff accommodation to fill up our water containers and tanks. The staff were very friendly and quite happy that we were taking water from what was obviously their own water supply. We were even offered hot water from a cauldron over a fire, apparently for general use. Birdlife was prolific and Paul managed to capture some good pictures of two crimson breasted shrikes – notoriously difficult birds to photograph! Soon we were heading north towards Piper Pan, a distance of 101 km! This track was obviously much more frequently used but still very scratchy. We saw only six vehicles travelling south towards Xade – three groups of two. There was a party camping at Piper Pan itself. We stopped to photograph some huge termite mounds along the way. The waterhole was not very busy, but there were a lot of wildebeest, springbok and gemsbok on the pans. A huge group of white backed vultures were gathered on the pan with a few lappet faced ones joining in. We could not see any sign of an obvious kill. We decided to take the pan loop that winds around the vast open and grass covered area. It was a lovely drive, but there was no shade in sight. Eventually we decided to have lunch at one of the intersections where a forgotten and fallen down signboard tried to mark the directions. It was blazingly hot, but if one parks into the sun the back of the Cruisers provide wonderful shade. We still had a long way to go (55 km) and we could not spend too much time in the Piper Pan area. We did see some more gemsbok and springbok along the way, but it was generally very quiet. Phokoje 3 campsite was a bit strange. It was enclosed by a thicket of Trumpet Thorn (Catophractes alexandri), but we just called them sticks! These rather untidy shrubs with the beautiful trumpet flowers would be accompanying us on most of our route in the north. The tree in the middle of the site had died. It was fortunately already quite late, so we did not need the shade. There was no view and it was a bit disappointing, but it certainly was a very “safe” site! When I asked for camping sites, I could only go by route and I did not have any idea what the sites would look like. So it was potluck! However, this also made the route a bit more exciting. We simply had to wait to see where we were going to camp.
We found level places for the vehicles in the rather confined space, had our showers and soon had a fire going. A mouse came to investigate, and we remembered the reports of mice chewing vehicle’s wiring. On the Central Kalahari Facebook site, they recommended having the bonnet open to minimize the shelter the mice would have. It sounded a bit far-fetched, but we opened our bonnets anyway. It turned out to be a very pleasant evening. We were looking forward to the route through Passarge Valley the next day and soon were fast asleep.

Geschreven door Leartravels