Karios to Twee Rivieren, South Africa 11- 13 Nov 07

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

11 November 2007. Karios to Keetmanshoop, Namibia (VFR 1:00 hrs), Keetsmanshoop to Upington, South Africa (VFR 1:22 hrs), Upington to Twee Rivieren, South Africa (VFR 0:59 hrs).

It’s best to avoid flying into South Africa on a Sunday, particularly at a small international airport because you have to pay a call-out fee for customs as well as for refuelling. For Keetmanshoop, our port of exit from Namibia, we just had to call ahead to let customs know we would be coming. The formalities were minimal and we were soon in the air again. At Upington, things took much longer. We had called ahead to arrange for both customs and Avgas at 11 a.m. and we arrived bang on time. The Avgas guy was on the spot so we decided to refuel straight away before entering the terminal. Finding the door to the plane open, he used brute force to close it and broke off the door brake. We could still lock the door in flight, but we would have to be careful in windy conditions on the ground to avoid it flying too far open. Luckily, we only had two more flights ahead of us before Stellenbosch and 50 hours maintenance.
As for customs, the lady official was waiting for us in the terminal. She could only accept cash payment in rands. As we’d only just arrived in South Africa, we didn’t have any rands yet, and there was no ATM at the airport. She ended up driving Flemming to the nearest ATM so we could pay her. She was friendly enough and didn’t charge any extra for that service. In fact, she only charged us the call-out fee for weekdays which was about half the fee for a Sunday.
We flew on to Twee Rivieren where Avis was supposed to be waiting for us with a car. But, for the first time on our trip, the arrangements had been screwed up and no one was there. Thanks to the iridium phone, we were able to discover that, although the car had been reserved for us, the employee in charge of our booking had forgotten to fill in the place of delivery. And it would take 3 hours for them to drive it from Upington to Twee Rivieren. So much for our first afternoon’s game drive!
We then phoned Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park reception and asked them to send someone to pick us up. The Capetown Flying Clubs web site actually warns pilots not to walk from the airstrip to the camp as the Kalahari lions and leopards consider pilots a delicacy. Furthermore, we had signed a indemnity form prior to getting the permission to use this South Africa National Park airstrip, such that SANP would not be held responsible for any lion dinners. We then booked into our chalet. It was rather utilitarian in comparison with the luxury lodges we’d spoilt ourselves with the past weeks, but it was well maintained and had everything we needed to make our own breakfast except for a toaster.

The car arrived in time for us to make a short trip into the park. Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is huge, covering almost 9600 sq km on the South African side and 28,400 sq km on the Botswana side. On day trips from Twee Rivieren we would only be able to drive around about a third of the South African side on two loops, a short and a long one.