Kalagadi NP Urikaruus Camp

Saturday January 9

Lockdown Day 289

We drove from Upington to the Kalagadi. 

We have been here many times but we have never seen it so lush and green. From Twee Rivieren, the main camp in the South, there are two diverging roads that travel in the river beds to the other two bigger camps; Mata Mata and Nossob. We drove the Mata Mata road and it looked more like the lawns of an english country estate than a desert.

We stayed at Urikaruus, one of the small wilderness camps to the West of the Mata Mata road. 

In all the years we have been coming here we have never stayed in these smaller camps. Reservations are very difficult to come by unless you queue outside the Sanparks offices from 6am on the day the bookings open a year in advance. With Covid travel restrictions in place we have been able to get some great reservations.

All of the Wilderness Camps are kilometres away from any main roads and the sense of being alone in the wilderness is amazing.

We got the honeymoon suite which just meant it was apart from the other row of four units. The cabin is built on stilts with parking for the car underneath. The units are well designed using wood, canvas and corrugated iron.

The view over the valley is lovely and there's a floodlit water hole in front. We had giraffe, springbok and wildebeest coming through but with so much water and food around the animals and the predators that follow them don't need to visit the waterholes.