The Drive to Marakele National Park

It rained heavily overnight with a mega storm but we were safe under our storm tarp although the weather did wake us up in the early hours.
I was up at 6am and it was still spitting. It was grey and cold.
I made coffees and was joined soon after by Ellie and as it was so cold we started packing things away almost straight away and at 7:45am we were ready to leave.
The map for Botsalano game reserve wasn’t really worth having as nothing lined up and all of the signage was sun damaged so navigating was a real nightmare and now we were trying to navigate on flooded tracks. I fortunately had the sense to engage 4 wheel drive at camp and it was a good job. There were some real tricky bits if deep water to get the through and I made the joke of saying the car made it feel it easy but then we got to the gate.
It took us 45 minutes to get to the entrance and we had to turn right onto the gravel track that was now just a big wet sloppy mess and it just got worse and worse. Mud flew everywhere. All over the car, the windscreen was covered and so was the trailer. If we stopped we’d never have got started again and I did my best to keep the car straight and moving forward without sliding off the road. It was like this for 26km, we were so grateful when we got to tarmac.
Our first stop was going to be Rustenberg Mall to do shopping and the whole 260km to it we were driving through black villages and townships. Neither of us knew whether it was safe or not there wasn’t a vibe either way.
Then we got to Rustenberg mall which had a chequers supermarket and lots of designer shops but again it was completely black. We only saw 2 other white people in a mall the size of lakeside. Nobody gave us a second look but we just didn’t feel comfortable and didn’t know if it was safe, do we hurried around chequers and to a pharmacy to get some anti inflammatory pills that the lady put in a cage so I couldn’t steal them and then back to the car.
It was another 160km to our final stop at Marakele National park and the last hour of driving was a killer at just 40kph through20 kilometres of roadworks with speed humps every 500 meters.
Finally at 3pm we arrived at Marakele National park and we were knackered. It had been a long drive but this park looks beautiful and is quiet. It’s divided into 2 sections of harmless animals roaming around our section and then there is a section with all of the animals including lions and wild dogs through another gated area. We will be checking that out tomorrow.Read more