South Africa 2023

The idea of staying at Munati lodge was that it was relatively "close" (still about an hour drive) to Mapungubwe national park. I had been there back in 2017 and thought to remember it was quite a nice park. Unfortunately things changed quite a bit since then and the maintenance wasn't too good anymore. Another quite unpleasant surprise was that there was no petrol station in the park eventhough it was noted on their website. This resulted in having to drive another 70 km to the petrol station in Alldays of which we drove the last 60 km on the reserve tank of the car. The moment we arrived at that petrol station was incredibly relieving because we really weren't sure if the car would make it. Next to the car being so low on fuel that road was also full of potholes making those 70 km a real challenge. After the relief from reaching the petrol station we got a delicious homemade milkshake because funnily enough I remembered the little shop next to the petrol station from back in 2017 when we stranded there with both cars of Lajuma with flat tyres. After this quite unplanned start of the day we eventually managed to get into Mapungubwe. We did see some wildlife (view elephants far away, zebra and wildebeest) but honestly it was a bit disappointing and we got really confused by seeing cows and donkeys in what was supposed to be a big 5 game reserve. After we drove the full loop once, we asked at the entrance gate if it was normal we saw this little wildlife, they said they made an opening in the fence meaning animals could walk freely in and out of the park and just cross the border to Botswana, this also explained the cows and donkeys being present in the park. All in all quite a disappointing visit but definitely not a bad day. We jokingly call Mapungubwe a farm instead of a National park from now on.Okumaya devam et