Day 32 – Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park to Augrabies Falls National Park – 10 October

Having still not learned my lesson, I decided to make one final early morning drive before leaving Kgalagadi. I decided to go back to the same waterhole I saw nothing at the day before, with the biggest difference being that the temperature was now 1 degree Celsius! To be honest, I didn’t really expect game so I took some sunrise pictures before heading back to camp and warmth!

We left Kgalagadi around 9:00, after inflating our tyres and getting our exit permit. The road between Kgalagadi and Upington is an easy drive, and once back in Upington we made a quick pitstop for some bread and milk before pushing on to Augrabies Falls National Park.

It was turning into a scorcher of a day and we were very glad that the aircon was running when we got to our chalet! The layout of the chalet was pretty much exactly the same as the one at Twee Rivieren, with an open-plan cooking and sleeping area. The chalet was clean and tidy, with supposedly a ‘view’, which just means it is in the front row of the chalets so there is nothing blocking your view of essentially nothing much!

Augrabies Falls National Park had a much larger camp than I realised, with 59 chalets in total, which can accommodate 136 people. Of course we went for a walk to the falls as soon as we unpacked and had a cup of coffee, even though it was very hot! I promised Brian (and myself) a beer at the end of the walk so at least we had something to look forward to. The views were impressive as always, even though the river is not anywhere near full strength and rainy season is still some way off. The sheer scale of the canyon is hard to capture in pictures, but believe me when I say it is massive and a must see! They have a display with pictures showing some of the floods in the past and it is hard to comprehend how much water comes down the canyon in a proper flood as it seems to almost fill that massive space! I was at school in Upington during the last BIG flood in 1988, though of course we didn’t rush up to the falls to look at it, but the pictures they have of it are amazing, with water coming from everywhere and covering vast areas.

We decided to have dinner at the Quiver Tree restaurant as we’ve been self catering for quite a while, so went down to the restaurant about 18:00 to ensure we’d catch the sunset. Brian had a burger for dinner and I had calamari for a starter, which was good, and a vegetarian platter for mains which was surprisingly good for meat country! I was seriously fed up with meat by this point! Brian’s burger was out of a packet, and not great but it was something to eat, and along with a couple of beers and wine and being able to sit outside watching the sunset, a good night out.