Tankwa Karoo Day 2

I was up at 6am, much earlier than normal but we want to see if we can find an aardvark while we’re here and we won’t find one in bed.
By 7am we had,had 2 coffees each and left camp and took a very slow drive to the main gravel road and we spotted a jackal.
On the main gravel road we drove past reception and then turned left onto a 4x4 trail and started to head towards a watering hole, here we spotted lots of springbok and oryx, then we found a family of jackals and the cubs were running around playing.
After that we found quite a few ostrich and I managed to find 2 ostrich feathers next to the road which I picked up and then I spotted an ostrich egg.
The 4x4 trail took us the best part of an hour and back on to a solid gravel road we headed away from the camp and to the edges of the park where we spotted a cape cobra in the road. This is the deadliest thing in the park. We didn’t manage to get a good shot and were both disappointed and we turned around and headed back into the park until we came to the turning for Ganagas Pass. Here we turned left and drove for 10 miles until we came to the pass.
This is a single track gravel pass and is unbelievably steep and scary with several 180° switchbacks. It is open to cars but I’m not sure if a normal car would make it. The views on the way up were unbelievable, this is where we wish we had the drone. At the top of the pass we did a U turn and headed back down. I engaged the hill descent mechanism so we didn’t slide right off the edge. It is crazy that there are no barriers or anything to stop us just falling off the edge.
At the bottom of the pass we headed back to camp and half way back I spotted another cape cobra and this one had his fan open. Ellie managed to get a good picture and a video of it shooting down a hole after a gerbil. We were super pleased.
We got back to camp just after midday and Ellie made ghostie toasties for lunch and we spent the rest of the day chilling at camp as my back was hurting.
At 4pm Ellie made muffins with a mix we brought in our last shop and the omni oven, for a first attempt they came out pretty well and while she was doing that I cleaned the truck bed of the car and put some draught excluder on the back door to stop dust getting in. This is the problem with the Tankwa, everything is so dry and dusty it gets everywhere. No sooner have we washed our hands then they are dirty again. Dust is in places we didn’t know existed, it is a nightmare.
At 5:30pm we had pasta for dinner using up the last of our fresh produce and for desert we had the muffins topped with golden syrup, it was all really tasty. Then we sat around the fire watching the sunset until 8pm.Read more