The Kgalagadi Epic Adventure

As a family we embarked on what we thought would be a nice holiday, at the end of March 2010. Living in the suburbs of greater Johannesburg, South Africa, we planned this trip to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier national Park. A South African Game reserve in the North West of our country. See the google map below:
Point A is where we stay and point B the entry into the South African portion of this park.

According to google maps, the route we took, the total distance just to get to the park entrance from home was 1 141 km – about 15 hours 23 mins .... hhhmmm well !

As you can see from the map we did not take the most direct route, because we had been advised that that road was not in great condition. So we made the decision to break the trip into two "easy" days, and stay over at Mokala National Park. A relatively new (open 2007) National Park, just south of Kimberly.

A first days trip of approximately 579km, and according to google route maps should take us about 7hr52m. We could not really understand that as 579km, all things being equal should normally take us less than 6hrs. We hadn't reckoned on the roadworks! It wound up taking us closer to 7hr35m... what does Google NOT know??!

We had left home at 10:30am on the morning of Monday 29th March, and arrived at Mokala reception at 6:05pm. But what a welcome! On the short trip from the gate into reception (about 6km if I recall correctly), we saw buffalo (Syncerus caffer), black-bellied korhaan (Eupodotis afra) and kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros).

And then ...... the sunset! WOW.

more later.

All the best

Ivan
http://www.andersen.co.za