Meserani Snake Park

We arrived at Meserani Snake Park, our home for the night, at around 5.15pm. This campsite is an overlanding institution, run by a South African lady from Durban, known to everyone as Ma. Her and her husband started the camp from scratch in 1993. She now runs the place with the help of local staff, her husband having died, and her children having settled in the US.

Having looked around and declined the offer to visit the snake park, we decided against an upgrade and went to pitch our tent. It’s the busiest campsite we’ve been on in terms of the number of overlanding trucks here! We counted seven!! By the time we’d put up our tent, the camping area was full of identical tents!! Luckily, we’d camped on the edge of the area so we could easily identify which tent was ours. Those in the middle had fun finding their accommodation later! 😂

Once we were set up, we went to the bar where we chatted to Ma while we enjoyed a cold drink. She’s a real character. She showed us her ‘stupid book’, where she notes down all the daft questions overlanders ask her! There were some classics in there, including ‘How many different animals make up the big five?’!! We told her about the traveller on our previous leg (who shall remain nameless!), who asked the guide if rhinos give birth to live babies!! She said she’d add it to the book! We found an entry from ‘Katie from Dragoman’ – I can only assume it’s the same Katie who led our West African trip. Her anecdote was about a Sarah from the UK – I hope it’s NOT the same Sarah who joined us on our leg from Cape Town to Vic Falls! She had been on several Dragoman trips, though, so it could be her!! 😂

Mark was chatting to Ma about motorbike racing. Her brother is Kork Ballington, four time world champion from the same era as Barry Sheene and Giacomo Agostini. He was racing when Mark was stewarding at Silverstone and Brands Hatch. Ma was very proud to show us a copy of Kork’s autobiography, ‘Ballington Uncorked’. There were some great photos in it that brought back lots of memories for Mark!

We stayed in the bar until dinnertime. Ibrahim had prepared cucumber soup to start with. Mark said it was delicious. I passed on it, given my aversion to the said vegetable! 😂 Main course was stir-fried beef with turmeric rice. It was very tasty.

After dinner, Nash gave us the briefing about tomorrow. There is another hike to some caves and a waterfall. He told us that it is more challenging and longer than the one we did yesterday. Given that we found that one tough in the heat, we have already decided that we will give tomorrow’s a miss. Nash said he could arrange extra rangers to guide people back if they found the hike too much. He said we would have to wait on the truck if we didn’t walk. We don’t mind! We’ll get caught up on some photos and things while we’re waiting.Read more