Safari 2021: Muddy Mokala and Active Augrabies

Wednesday 28 January to Saturday 1May

Lockdown Day 398 to 401

On Wednesday, we headed off on a six week camping safari to the Northern Cape, Namibia and Botswana with Hanlie and Andrew. This trip was planned for May 2020 but I had to postpone and rebook it by a year due to the Covid Lockdown. Sadly, Rina and Menon are unable to join us from the UK as planned due to ongoing travel restrictions there. Happily, Ronell and Johan will join us instead.  After a long day on the road we arrived at Mokala NP and set up at Motswedi campsite. This campsite is lovely; set on a dam with only six sites; each with its own kitchen and bathroom. Just as we got our braai going it started raining so we had to shelter in the open kitchen to eat.

It rained all night but sort of cleared up in the morning. Neil and I drove to Kimberley to get some hinges to fix our caravan cupboard and by the time we returned the rain was back. We couldn't braai so we had my homemade pea and ham soup sitting in our bathroom.

Packing up camp in the rain is no fun; everything is wet and muddy. This late rain is very unseasonal and unexpected. The roads leaving camp where very muddy and underwater in places. Suddenly we hit a very deep and slippery section and before we knew it the caravan slid into a muddy ditch and got stuck. We had to deflate all the tyres and get pulled out. Then we unhitched and went back to pull out the Magg's caravan. Neil redeemed himself with some superskilled driving and we were finally on the road again.

We made it to Augrabies 8 minutes before the gate closed. We spent most of Saturday washing, cleaning and laundering all the wet and muddy stuff. Pretty active.There was a trail run competition in the National Park over the weekend so everyone else in camp was pretty active too.